First off, glorious, fantastic news for my fellow Cubs fans: general manager Jim Hendry has been fired.
That established... every so often I post a little science project here. Well, here's another one:
1. Drink a cup of coffee and make sure the cup leaves a stain.
2. Sit there watching that stain as it dries.
Yes. That is your science experiment for today. It formed a ring, right? Your question is, why did it form a ring?
"Because the cup's base formed a ring and the coffee just stuck to it?"
...ooookaaaay, there's that too... tell you what, go get a flat-bottom cup and do it again.
"More coffee? Can't I just skull a 5-Hour Energy or something?"
YOU WILL DO AS THE INTERNET COMMANDS YOU TO, CITIZEN.
...
"It formed another ring."
Okay, now why did it do that?
"Because Obama refuses to do something about the illegal Colombians taking the jobs of hardworking taxpayers!"
Holy hell, man. It's COFFEE. The University of Pennsylvania recently- and I'm sure they have some larger purpose for this I'm not thinking of yet- looked into not only why that happens, but how to prevent it.
I'll let them explain.
Showing posts with label sports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sports. Show all posts
Friday, August 19, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Soccer: That's Just A Fad Too
We needed three seats. We got two. I need happy news.
Luckily, I got it: Major League Soccer just struck a three-year TV deal with NBC. According to the deal, the mothership will air two regular-season MLS games, two playoff games, and two national-team games per year, and Versus- soon to be renamed NBC Sports- will air 38 regular-season games, three playoff games and two nationa-team games.
Those two regular-season games on NBC may not look like much, but they are the first regular-season games to be on American network television. Prior to this, only playoffs and the title game got network play (on ABC).
But soccer will never get over in the US, right?
Luckily, I got it: Major League Soccer just struck a three-year TV deal with NBC. According to the deal, the mothership will air two regular-season MLS games, two playoff games, and two national-team games per year, and Versus- soon to be renamed NBC Sports- will air 38 regular-season games, three playoff games and two nationa-team games.
Those two regular-season games on NBC may not look like much, but they are the first regular-season games to be on American network television. Prior to this, only playoffs and the title game got network play (on ABC).
But soccer will never get over in the US, right?
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Ur Mouth
One of the things we sell at work are those big letter stickers you use on your house or on signs or what have you. Every so often, some customer will come along and rearrange these stickers so as to form words or phrases, their own little unique take on the world and all its foibles.
Last night, one such person used these letters to announce to the world an earth-shattering hypothesis, something that could, if true, very well change everything we know about our civilization. According to this person, this prodigy, and I must take the utmost care in transcribing this theory to the letter, "BALLSACKINURMOUTH."
Now, for those unaware, 'ur' is a German prefix meaning original or primitive. Knowing that, what this theory clearly states is that not only did the first known mouth evolve after the invention of ball-related sports, but that a container for those balls could fit entirely inside this original, proto-mouth.
But like any potentially game-changing hypothesis, we should probably test it before we start throwing the Nobel Prize Minting Machine into overdrive so that we may shower this genius with the accolades befitting of a revelation on the scale of BALLSACKINURMOUTH.
So let's first figure out, when was this Ur Mouth conceived?
As it turns out, the origin of the mouth is caught up in a bit of a chicken-or-egg-type debate in evolutionary circles alongside the origin of the anus. Essentially, the debate is whether the anus came first and, as the gut evolved, it eventually reached the other side of the body to become a mouth; or whether the mouth evolved first and the gut eventually became an anus on the other side.
I'm not the best as deciphering the particulars here, but the focus centers around a certain part of the animal kingdom family tree. First comes bilaterians, which branch off to flatworms on one side of the tree, and protostomes and deuterostomes on the other. If none of these sound familiar except 'flatworm', that's because these aren't species. We're much higher up the classification scale, into the realm of subkingdoms and superphyla. (You were taught that it was just kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, right? Not quite. Biologists have intermediate categories too. Also, there's another category, 'domain', that sits above kingdom as of 1990.)
We're not, however, interested in which came first. What we need is when the mouth showed up. That answer seems to be just as vexing as which came first. The answer is probably somewhere in a 2008 paper in the journal Nature called "Acoel development indicates the independent evolution of the bilaterian mouth and anus", by Andreas Hejnol and Mark Q. Martindale at the University of Hawaii, but the article costs $32 to read. Just in case you have $32 for this, here you go. It, by the way, appears to put together a weird third theory: that the gut came first in two parts- one for the mouth, one for the anus- and the whole mouth-or-anus question is simply a matter of which side the gut, which would of course connect into a single whole, busted through first. What I was able to coax out of the paper without having to hand over $32- which consists of three of the tables- seems to indicate that the paper centers around an acoel flatworm, Convolutriloba longfissura.
Outside of that paper, though, the focus on learning about it appears to center around how we can more effectively murder it (PDF), as it's seen as a pest in larger saltwater aquariums. As a result, we'll need to back up to the larger class, acoela, and go from there. Acoels, as it happens, date back to primitive times. We'll take that rough figure of 'primitive times', which in this context generally means hundreds of millions, potentially billions of years ago, and move to the other end of the equation, ball-based sports.
The question is, did ball-based sports come into existence billions of years ago? If so, we'll have to try and narrow things down further somehow. If not, though, eye-opening as it may seem, the BALLSACKINURMOUTH theory will have to go by the wayside.
Figuring out the ball's invention is murky as well; its creation can't be pinpointed to any one culture in particular. (Lot of definitive answers we're getting today, aren't there?) However, like the mouth, we can pin down a range. While documentation of the usage of balls dates to the Mayan culture, China's Ts'in Dynasty, and the ancient Romans and Greeks, the earliest of the known references to a ball used for sport comes out of ancient Egypt, at around 2500 BCE. Some in the Chinese camp claim as early as 5000 BCE.
The Ts'in Dynasty game vaguely resembles soccer. Two bamboo poles were set up, and a net was strung between them, with a hole cut in the net. In order to score, the ball- made of leather and stuffed with animal fur- had to be kicked through the hole in the net. Players could not use their hands.
The ancient Egyptian game, brought up by Robert W. Henderson at the University of Illinois to dispel myths about Abner Doubleday inventing baseball, maintains that balls were used in a fertility ritual, replacing human heads. Several different makes of ball have been figured upon, including cloth balls filled with seeds, catgut wrapped in leather or deerskin, and one ball made out of linen found in a tomb, visible here. The bocce ball crowd, in an attempt to re-one-up the Chinese, pegs a stone ball as being used in ancient Egypt as early as 5200 BCE, according to hieroglyphics. Naturally, the game resembles bocce ball.
However- tragically as it is- all of these dates are nearly hundreds of millions of years more recent than 'hundreds of millions of years ago', and almost billions of years more recent than 'billions of years ago'. This is to say nothing of the sack the balls need to have been in, or the size of Ur Mouth, which considering the size of acoels is many, many times smaller than these earliest balls, much less their sack.
In fact, the year difference is so far off that it's almost a perversion of intelligence to make claims about BALLSACKINURMOUTH. It's really rather disgusting.
Last night, one such person used these letters to announce to the world an earth-shattering hypothesis, something that could, if true, very well change everything we know about our civilization. According to this person, this prodigy, and I must take the utmost care in transcribing this theory to the letter, "BALLSACKINURMOUTH."
Now, for those unaware, 'ur' is a German prefix meaning original or primitive. Knowing that, what this theory clearly states is that not only did the first known mouth evolve after the invention of ball-related sports, but that a container for those balls could fit entirely inside this original, proto-mouth.
But like any potentially game-changing hypothesis, we should probably test it before we start throwing the Nobel Prize Minting Machine into overdrive so that we may shower this genius with the accolades befitting of a revelation on the scale of BALLSACKINURMOUTH.
So let's first figure out, when was this Ur Mouth conceived?
As it turns out, the origin of the mouth is caught up in a bit of a chicken-or-egg-type debate in evolutionary circles alongside the origin of the anus. Essentially, the debate is whether the anus came first and, as the gut evolved, it eventually reached the other side of the body to become a mouth; or whether the mouth evolved first and the gut eventually became an anus on the other side.
I'm not the best as deciphering the particulars here, but the focus centers around a certain part of the animal kingdom family tree. First comes bilaterians, which branch off to flatworms on one side of the tree, and protostomes and deuterostomes on the other. If none of these sound familiar except 'flatworm', that's because these aren't species. We're much higher up the classification scale, into the realm of subkingdoms and superphyla. (You were taught that it was just kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, right? Not quite. Biologists have intermediate categories too. Also, there's another category, 'domain', that sits above kingdom as of 1990.)
We're not, however, interested in which came first. What we need is when the mouth showed up. That answer seems to be just as vexing as which came first. The answer is probably somewhere in a 2008 paper in the journal Nature called "Acoel development indicates the independent evolution of the bilaterian mouth and anus", by Andreas Hejnol and Mark Q. Martindale at the University of Hawaii, but the article costs $32 to read. Just in case you have $32 for this, here you go. It, by the way, appears to put together a weird third theory: that the gut came first in two parts- one for the mouth, one for the anus- and the whole mouth-or-anus question is simply a matter of which side the gut, which would of course connect into a single whole, busted through first. What I was able to coax out of the paper without having to hand over $32- which consists of three of the tables- seems to indicate that the paper centers around an acoel flatworm, Convolutriloba longfissura.
Outside of that paper, though, the focus on learning about it appears to center around how we can more effectively murder it (PDF), as it's seen as a pest in larger saltwater aquariums. As a result, we'll need to back up to the larger class, acoela, and go from there. Acoels, as it happens, date back to primitive times. We'll take that rough figure of 'primitive times', which in this context generally means hundreds of millions, potentially billions of years ago, and move to the other end of the equation, ball-based sports.
The question is, did ball-based sports come into existence billions of years ago? If so, we'll have to try and narrow things down further somehow. If not, though, eye-opening as it may seem, the BALLSACKINURMOUTH theory will have to go by the wayside.
Figuring out the ball's invention is murky as well; its creation can't be pinpointed to any one culture in particular. (Lot of definitive answers we're getting today, aren't there?) However, like the mouth, we can pin down a range. While documentation of the usage of balls dates to the Mayan culture, China's Ts'in Dynasty, and the ancient Romans and Greeks, the earliest of the known references to a ball used for sport comes out of ancient Egypt, at around 2500 BCE. Some in the Chinese camp claim as early as 5000 BCE.
The Ts'in Dynasty game vaguely resembles soccer. Two bamboo poles were set up, and a net was strung between them, with a hole cut in the net. In order to score, the ball- made of leather and stuffed with animal fur- had to be kicked through the hole in the net. Players could not use their hands.
The ancient Egyptian game, brought up by Robert W. Henderson at the University of Illinois to dispel myths about Abner Doubleday inventing baseball, maintains that balls were used in a fertility ritual, replacing human heads. Several different makes of ball have been figured upon, including cloth balls filled with seeds, catgut wrapped in leather or deerskin, and one ball made out of linen found in a tomb, visible here. The bocce ball crowd, in an attempt to re-one-up the Chinese, pegs a stone ball as being used in ancient Egypt as early as 5200 BCE, according to hieroglyphics. Naturally, the game resembles bocce ball.
However- tragically as it is- all of these dates are nearly hundreds of millions of years more recent than 'hundreds of millions of years ago', and almost billions of years more recent than 'billions of years ago'. This is to say nothing of the sack the balls need to have been in, or the size of Ur Mouth, which considering the size of acoels is many, many times smaller than these earliest balls, much less their sack.
In fact, the year difference is so far off that it's almost a perversion of intelligence to make claims about BALLSACKINURMOUTH. It's really rather disgusting.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Outside The Lines, Inside The All-Star Team
Recently, I ruminated about the wisdom of including sportswriters on the Journalism All-Star Team. This was done after being confronted with Grantland. Grantland includes some very stellar writing, but then, the focus is on sports and pop culture, two of the lesser-heralded beats of the industry. The fields just plain are not as important as others in the grand scheme of things; when world events such as 9/11 or the death of Osama bin Laden intrude on sports, sportswriters will often make a mention of how, when it gets down to it, it's just a game.
It is not, however, impossible to practice true, traditional, thoughtful journalism in these fields. It's just a lot harder to do than in fields of greater importance.
Which is why I am today kicking myself. There is someone covering sports, at ESPN yet, that practices true, traditional journalism day in and day out to such a degree that they deserve an All-Star jersey. In fact, there are two. But I was so worried about Grantland that I failed to notice.
Why did I not notice Bob Ley and Jeremy Schaap earlier?
Ley, along with Chris Berman, is one of the only two anchors from ESPN's founding in 1979 to still be with the network. You currently know him as the host of Outside The Lines, and the most straight-laced reporter ESPN has. Ley was one of the anchors ESPN went to for the only airing of SportsCenter on 9/11, sitting alongside Trey Wingo. When ESPN has a deep, controversial issue to cover, one that is too heavy to be given the usual treatment of a couple of guys yelling at each other, you can be pretty sure Ley, an eight-time Sports Emmy winner, is not too far away. He has stewarded Outside The Lines from its start in 1990 as a monthly special to its current half-hour weekday timeslot.
And when Ley needs a day off, Jeremy Schaap is usually the first person turned to as a substitute. He has six Sports Emmys to his name for his work on Outside The Lines, as well as SportsCenter and fellow investigative show E:60, a weekly one-hour program. On occasion, you'll also see him on the mainstream-news circuit through appearances on Nightline and ABC's World News Tonight.
As is what we might as well call tradition at this point, Ley and Schaap will now be shown at the top of their respective games.
Ley first, showing how traditional journalism can be done at the sports desk on a daily basis with this discussion concerning concussions in hockey:
As for Schaap, when you type his name into YouTube and view the suggestions, above even his name alone will be his name sitting alongside Bobby Fischer. This will lead you to his most famous moment (one that got him one of his Emmys), the 2005 report "Finding Bobby Fischer". I remember this piece from when it was first presented, and part of why it got the level of attention it did was the fact that Schaap, who almost never editorializes, did so in this piece, and to Fischer's face at that.
Editorializing in journalism is a bit like using the word "fuck", or a comedian cracking up at a joke during their skit. The power it has when you do it is inversely proportional to how often you do it. If Quentin Tarantino says "fuck", you don't notice. It barely even registers. If the Dalai Lama says "fuck", you can just hear the record needle scratch.
In the same way, the more a journalist editorializes, the less you tend to notice any one editorial, including those in op-ed section itself. If you see an editorial by George Will, it probably won't register for long. It's George Will. That's what he does. That's ALL he does. But if Walter Cronkite editorializes, holy hell, sound the alarm bells.
The latter is what happened with Schaap when he, well, found Bobby Fischer. As it happened, Fischer had long ago befriended Jeremy's father Dick, but Dick over the years had become dismayed over Fischer's brewing anti-Semitism. Especially since the Schaaps were Jewish. As was Fischer. Dick would eventually remark that Fischer "did not have a sane bone left in his body," words still ringing in Fischer's years decades later when Jeremy found him in Iceland...
It is not, however, impossible to practice true, traditional, thoughtful journalism in these fields. It's just a lot harder to do than in fields of greater importance.
Which is why I am today kicking myself. There is someone covering sports, at ESPN yet, that practices true, traditional journalism day in and day out to such a degree that they deserve an All-Star jersey. In fact, there are two. But I was so worried about Grantland that I failed to notice.
Why did I not notice Bob Ley and Jeremy Schaap earlier?
Ley, along with Chris Berman, is one of the only two anchors from ESPN's founding in 1979 to still be with the network. You currently know him as the host of Outside The Lines, and the most straight-laced reporter ESPN has. Ley was one of the anchors ESPN went to for the only airing of SportsCenter on 9/11, sitting alongside Trey Wingo. When ESPN has a deep, controversial issue to cover, one that is too heavy to be given the usual treatment of a couple of guys yelling at each other, you can be pretty sure Ley, an eight-time Sports Emmy winner, is not too far away. He has stewarded Outside The Lines from its start in 1990 as a monthly special to its current half-hour weekday timeslot.
And when Ley needs a day off, Jeremy Schaap is usually the first person turned to as a substitute. He has six Sports Emmys to his name for his work on Outside The Lines, as well as SportsCenter and fellow investigative show E:60, a weekly one-hour program. On occasion, you'll also see him on the mainstream-news circuit through appearances on Nightline and ABC's World News Tonight.
As is what we might as well call tradition at this point, Ley and Schaap will now be shown at the top of their respective games.
Ley first, showing how traditional journalism can be done at the sports desk on a daily basis with this discussion concerning concussions in hockey:
As for Schaap, when you type his name into YouTube and view the suggestions, above even his name alone will be his name sitting alongside Bobby Fischer. This will lead you to his most famous moment (one that got him one of his Emmys), the 2005 report "Finding Bobby Fischer". I remember this piece from when it was first presented, and part of why it got the level of attention it did was the fact that Schaap, who almost never editorializes, did so in this piece, and to Fischer's face at that.
Editorializing in journalism is a bit like using the word "fuck", or a comedian cracking up at a joke during their skit. The power it has when you do it is inversely proportional to how often you do it. If Quentin Tarantino says "fuck", you don't notice. It barely even registers. If the Dalai Lama says "fuck", you can just hear the record needle scratch.
In the same way, the more a journalist editorializes, the less you tend to notice any one editorial, including those in op-ed section itself. If you see an editorial by George Will, it probably won't register for long. It's George Will. That's what he does. That's ALL he does. But if Walter Cronkite editorializes, holy hell, sound the alarm bells.
The latter is what happened with Schaap when he, well, found Bobby Fischer. As it happened, Fischer had long ago befriended Jeremy's father Dick, but Dick over the years had become dismayed over Fischer's brewing anti-Semitism. Especially since the Schaaps were Jewish. As was Fischer. Dick would eventually remark that Fischer "did not have a sane bone left in his body," words still ringing in Fischer's years decades later when Jeremy found him in Iceland...
Friday, July 1, 2011
The First Professional Wrestler
Let's begin with a question. Without looking it up, who was the first person we would recognize today as a professional wrestler?
"Hulk Hogan?"
...hoo boy. Either you have never paid any attention to professional wrestling, or you are incredibly ignorant of what you've been watching. Even in the era since Hulk arrived on the scene, took the spotlight from the likes of Bruno Sammartino, and repeatedly took wrestling by storm, names from long before had been placed on screen and even in the ring, like Bob Backlund (who debuted in 1973), Gorilla Monsoon (who debuted in 1959), and Mae Young (who debuted in 1939.) Young to this day still recalls her having been wrestling in Memphis the day of the Pearl Harbor bombing.
Hulk Hogan, meanwhile, debuted in 1977.
"You mentioned Bruno Sammartino. What about him? Who's he?"
Sammartino debuted in 1959, same as Monsoon. He holds the all-time record for longest reign as champion of what was then the WWWF (World Wide Wrestling Federation), or for that matter any other pro wrestling world title belt. That reign lasted from 1963- a defeat of "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers"- to 1971- a loss to Ivan Koloff. He left the promotion on poor terms, and has since grown to hate what pro wrestling has become, but since Vince McMahon is the one with the bully pulpit, you don't hear from Sammartino much these days.
"Oh, geez, who's that one guy, the pretty boy. First one with a gimmick."
You mean Gorgeous George?
"Yeah, him! That's the guy."
He debuted in 1932, earlier than anyone we've mentioned so far. He was in fact the first to have a gimmick that really, truly went over with the crowd: the aforementioned pretty-boy image. He dyed his hair blonde, wore perfume and bobby pins, used Pomp and Circumstance as theme music decades before Randy Savage did, had a valet named Jeffries who laid out a red carpet and threw rose petals, the works.
It should go without saying that George cheated and cried like a baby every time he got beat up. The whole act, combined with the earliest days of television, caused people- and by people we are referring to World War 2 veterans who saw George's manhood fairly lacking- to pay top dollar for the privilege of hating him in person. Prior to George, you could get away with being a straight-laced gimmickless grappler. After George, it was all about the showmanship from then on.
But he's not who we're looking for. There were some before him. And there were gimmicks before him as well.
"Well, who, then?"
What must first be made clear is that professional wrestling was borne out of true, non-kayfabe, we-don't-know-the-winner-in-advance wrestling. This type of wrestling, borne out of Lancashire, England, was known as 'catch' wrestling- short for catch-as-catch-can- and one melded slowly into the other. Here's a clip from 1903 of what catch-as-catch-can looks like, unearthed by HBO.
The melding was smooth enough that the question of who should be called the first true pro wrestler can be a slightly maddening thing to answer. However, one place can help out: the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum in Amsterdam, New York. Unlike WWE's in-house Hall of Fame, which inducts based on who happens to be in good standing with WWE at the time, the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame is not affiliated with any one promotion, and thus has a purer interest in chronicling the sport's true history. Even so, the question of who is pro and who is not proves a matter of interpretation. Do you count the first with a gimmick? The first to accept money? The first to wrestle a match whose outcome was decided in advance?
Ultimately, I opted to go with the earliest-debuting wrestler the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame had inducted. This was Martin "Farmer" Burns, who debuted in 1869 and is today known as "The Grandmaster of American Wrestling". Back then, wrestling was the realm of traveling carnivals and take-on-all-comers contests. The latter was a format in which cash was awarded to any man that could throw, defeat, or sometimes merely survive against a featured wrestler. At age 8, Burns claimed one such prize, worth 15 cents, and was on his way.
Burns was born in a log cabin in Cedar County, Iowa. As the nickname suggests, he was raised on a farm. His father died when he was age 11, and to help support the family, Burns went to work. Burns went to a lot of work. He would farm; he would log; he would chop wood. He would also carry his work ethic into the gym, or at least what passed for a gym back then.
The most imposing feature of Burns was his neck, which he built up to a 20 inch diameter after losing a match early in 1886 to a stranglehold applied by Evan "Strangler" Lewis. (For reference, Shaquille O'Neal's neck also measures 20 inches. But while Shaq weighs around 325 pounds, Burns came in at a mere 160.) Once developed, he demonstrated the strength of his neck by having himself hanged.
Yes. With a noose. He did this regularly, often several times a day. For good measure, while he was up there, he would whistle "Yankee Doodle Dandy".
In 1889, Burns made his big break at an event in Chicago. At this event, $25 was offered to anyone that could avoid being thrown for 15 minutes each by Jack Carkeek and, as fate would have it, Evan "Strangler" Lewis.
Carkeek, for one, had heard of Burns, who aside from the loss to Lewis had run roughshod over the Iowa wrestling circuit, and wanted no part of him. Carkeek asked the booker to call the whole thing off as soon as he knew of Burns' intentions, but Burns, who had come into town in the first place to deliver hogs, said he was there for the next ten days, and anytime Carkeek was ready would be fine.
Carkeek's fears turned out to be well-founded. Despite Burns showing up in his farmer's overalls (and picking up his nickname in the process), underneath those overalls was a very strong, very scary man. Carkeek never had a prayer. Instead of throwing Burns, Burns threw him around for the 15 minutes. Lewis was next, and he knew Burns from before. But Burns had built his neck up because of Lewis, and this time Lewis had no answer. Burns took the $25, and space in the Chicago papers.
Aside from his conditioning, Burns benefited from having a well-rounded wrestling style. In those days, the rules were far from uniform, with the legality of various moves altering from match to match. One-dimensional wrestlers were in big trouble if they found themselves in a match where their signature move was banned. Burns had many moves to fall back on- the full-nelson, the half-nelson, the chicken wing, the double wrist lock, the hammerlock, several kinds of toe holds.
Most importantly to wrestling, Burns popularized the concept of the pinfall. In the days of catch wrestling, it was more common to win a match by throwing your opponent to the ground, with pinfalls only coming into play if nobody had made a throw after a certain timeframe. (Matches sometimes had a time limit. Sometimes they didn't. When they didn't, bouts could potentially last for hours. Nine-hour fights were not unheard of.) Burns milked the art of the pinfall for all it was worth. If it was too early in the match for a pin to decide things, Burns didn't care. He would pin just to set up one of his holds. Nobody else was giving the pin nearly as much attention to such great effect. It was like Notre Dame popularizing the forward pass in football.
Over the years, Burns would claim to have wrestled thousands of matches, only losing six or seven. The exact numbers seem as academic as any other win-loss record in the sport that isn't the Undertaker's Wrestlemania winning streak. The point is made.
By 1893, Burns had advanced to the role of teacher. He would never really stop wrestling, but now he was training as well. In that year, he opened his first gym in Rock Island, Illinois; later, he would open another in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1914, he published a mail-order, 12-month wrestling course called 'Lessons in Wrestling and Physical Culture', which, true to Burns' nature, emphasized hard work, holds, and devoted one lesson to building up the neck.
One of Burns' many, many students was fellow Iowan Frank Gotch, another Hall of Famer who claimed a world title in 1908, and whom some consider to be the greatest wrestler of the era, if not of all time. In fact, another of Burns' lessons concerned a move called the "Gotch Toe Hold". Burns acted as coach for Iowa's first state wrestling champion, Cedar Rapids Washington, in 1921. To this day, the hotbed of collegiate wrestling continues to be the Plains states, ranging from North Dakota and Minnesota to Iowa, Nebraska and Oklahoma. Iowa remains the capital of wrestling in America, chiefly due to Burns' lessons and Gotch's testimonial performances.
Burns lived long enough to see Gorgeous George begin his career, but not long enough to see the persona debut; the man behind it, George Wagner, would not adopt the Gorgeous George persona until 1941, and Burns died in 1937. So it's possible that Burns died not quite realizing the direction his sport would ultimately take.
Meanwhile, while all that is seen today in the sport can ultimately trace back to the roots Burns had laid, today's competitors and especially fans are in all likelihood not aware of just who started them down the path they now tread.
But while neither end of professional wrestling's timeline may be able to quite see the other, they in at least one sense remain kindred spirits.
After all, if someone came out and hanged himself every week as part of his entrance, you'd notice.
"Hulk Hogan?"
...hoo boy. Either you have never paid any attention to professional wrestling, or you are incredibly ignorant of what you've been watching. Even in the era since Hulk arrived on the scene, took the spotlight from the likes of Bruno Sammartino, and repeatedly took wrestling by storm, names from long before had been placed on screen and even in the ring, like Bob Backlund (who debuted in 1973), Gorilla Monsoon (who debuted in 1959), and Mae Young (who debuted in 1939.) Young to this day still recalls her having been wrestling in Memphis the day of the Pearl Harbor bombing.
Hulk Hogan, meanwhile, debuted in 1977.
"You mentioned Bruno Sammartino. What about him? Who's he?"
Sammartino debuted in 1959, same as Monsoon. He holds the all-time record for longest reign as champion of what was then the WWWF (World Wide Wrestling Federation), or for that matter any other pro wrestling world title belt. That reign lasted from 1963- a defeat of "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers"- to 1971- a loss to Ivan Koloff. He left the promotion on poor terms, and has since grown to hate what pro wrestling has become, but since Vince McMahon is the one with the bully pulpit, you don't hear from Sammartino much these days.
"Oh, geez, who's that one guy, the pretty boy. First one with a gimmick."
You mean Gorgeous George?
"Yeah, him! That's the guy."
He debuted in 1932, earlier than anyone we've mentioned so far. He was in fact the first to have a gimmick that really, truly went over with the crowd: the aforementioned pretty-boy image. He dyed his hair blonde, wore perfume and bobby pins, used Pomp and Circumstance as theme music decades before Randy Savage did, had a valet named Jeffries who laid out a red carpet and threw rose petals, the works.
It should go without saying that George cheated and cried like a baby every time he got beat up. The whole act, combined with the earliest days of television, caused people- and by people we are referring to World War 2 veterans who saw George's manhood fairly lacking- to pay top dollar for the privilege of hating him in person. Prior to George, you could get away with being a straight-laced gimmickless grappler. After George, it was all about the showmanship from then on.
But he's not who we're looking for. There were some before him. And there were gimmicks before him as well.
"Well, who, then?"
What must first be made clear is that professional wrestling was borne out of true, non-kayfabe, we-don't-know-the-winner-in-advance wrestling. This type of wrestling, borne out of Lancashire, England, was known as 'catch' wrestling- short for catch-as-catch-can- and one melded slowly into the other. Here's a clip from 1903 of what catch-as-catch-can looks like, unearthed by HBO.
The melding was smooth enough that the question of who should be called the first true pro wrestler can be a slightly maddening thing to answer. However, one place can help out: the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum in Amsterdam, New York. Unlike WWE's in-house Hall of Fame, which inducts based on who happens to be in good standing with WWE at the time, the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame is not affiliated with any one promotion, and thus has a purer interest in chronicling the sport's true history. Even so, the question of who is pro and who is not proves a matter of interpretation. Do you count the first with a gimmick? The first to accept money? The first to wrestle a match whose outcome was decided in advance?
Ultimately, I opted to go with the earliest-debuting wrestler the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame had inducted. This was Martin "Farmer" Burns, who debuted in 1869 and is today known as "The Grandmaster of American Wrestling". Back then, wrestling was the realm of traveling carnivals and take-on-all-comers contests. The latter was a format in which cash was awarded to any man that could throw, defeat, or sometimes merely survive against a featured wrestler. At age 8, Burns claimed one such prize, worth 15 cents, and was on his way.
Burns was born in a log cabin in Cedar County, Iowa. As the nickname suggests, he was raised on a farm. His father died when he was age 11, and to help support the family, Burns went to work. Burns went to a lot of work. He would farm; he would log; he would chop wood. He would also carry his work ethic into the gym, or at least what passed for a gym back then.
The most imposing feature of Burns was his neck, which he built up to a 20 inch diameter after losing a match early in 1886 to a stranglehold applied by Evan "Strangler" Lewis. (For reference, Shaquille O'Neal's neck also measures 20 inches. But while Shaq weighs around 325 pounds, Burns came in at a mere 160.) Once developed, he demonstrated the strength of his neck by having himself hanged.
Yes. With a noose. He did this regularly, often several times a day. For good measure, while he was up there, he would whistle "Yankee Doodle Dandy".
In 1889, Burns made his big break at an event in Chicago. At this event, $25 was offered to anyone that could avoid being thrown for 15 minutes each by Jack Carkeek and, as fate would have it, Evan "Strangler" Lewis.
Carkeek, for one, had heard of Burns, who aside from the loss to Lewis had run roughshod over the Iowa wrestling circuit, and wanted no part of him. Carkeek asked the booker to call the whole thing off as soon as he knew of Burns' intentions, but Burns, who had come into town in the first place to deliver hogs, said he was there for the next ten days, and anytime Carkeek was ready would be fine.
Carkeek's fears turned out to be well-founded. Despite Burns showing up in his farmer's overalls (and picking up his nickname in the process), underneath those overalls was a very strong, very scary man. Carkeek never had a prayer. Instead of throwing Burns, Burns threw him around for the 15 minutes. Lewis was next, and he knew Burns from before. But Burns had built his neck up because of Lewis, and this time Lewis had no answer. Burns took the $25, and space in the Chicago papers.
Aside from his conditioning, Burns benefited from having a well-rounded wrestling style. In those days, the rules were far from uniform, with the legality of various moves altering from match to match. One-dimensional wrestlers were in big trouble if they found themselves in a match where their signature move was banned. Burns had many moves to fall back on- the full-nelson, the half-nelson, the chicken wing, the double wrist lock, the hammerlock, several kinds of toe holds.
Most importantly to wrestling, Burns popularized the concept of the pinfall. In the days of catch wrestling, it was more common to win a match by throwing your opponent to the ground, with pinfalls only coming into play if nobody had made a throw after a certain timeframe. (Matches sometimes had a time limit. Sometimes they didn't. When they didn't, bouts could potentially last for hours. Nine-hour fights were not unheard of.) Burns milked the art of the pinfall for all it was worth. If it was too early in the match for a pin to decide things, Burns didn't care. He would pin just to set up one of his holds. Nobody else was giving the pin nearly as much attention to such great effect. It was like Notre Dame popularizing the forward pass in football.
Over the years, Burns would claim to have wrestled thousands of matches, only losing six or seven. The exact numbers seem as academic as any other win-loss record in the sport that isn't the Undertaker's Wrestlemania winning streak. The point is made.
By 1893, Burns had advanced to the role of teacher. He would never really stop wrestling, but now he was training as well. In that year, he opened his first gym in Rock Island, Illinois; later, he would open another in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1914, he published a mail-order, 12-month wrestling course called 'Lessons in Wrestling and Physical Culture', which, true to Burns' nature, emphasized hard work, holds, and devoted one lesson to building up the neck.
One of Burns' many, many students was fellow Iowan Frank Gotch, another Hall of Famer who claimed a world title in 1908, and whom some consider to be the greatest wrestler of the era, if not of all time. In fact, another of Burns' lessons concerned a move called the "Gotch Toe Hold". Burns acted as coach for Iowa's first state wrestling champion, Cedar Rapids Washington, in 1921. To this day, the hotbed of collegiate wrestling continues to be the Plains states, ranging from North Dakota and Minnesota to Iowa, Nebraska and Oklahoma. Iowa remains the capital of wrestling in America, chiefly due to Burns' lessons and Gotch's testimonial performances.
Burns lived long enough to see Gorgeous George begin his career, but not long enough to see the persona debut; the man behind it, George Wagner, would not adopt the Gorgeous George persona until 1941, and Burns died in 1937. So it's possible that Burns died not quite realizing the direction his sport would ultimately take.
Meanwhile, while all that is seen today in the sport can ultimately trace back to the roots Burns had laid, today's competitors and especially fans are in all likelihood not aware of just who started them down the path they now tread.
But while neither end of professional wrestling's timeline may be able to quite see the other, they in at least one sense remain kindred spirits.
After all, if someone came out and hanged himself every week as part of his entrance, you'd notice.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Above The Tree Line
When you think of Mont Ventoux--
...what?
...Well, you are now. Go with it.
Mont Ventoux, when AND IF you think of it, you know as one of the more storied climbs in the Tour de France.
...Yes, the Tour de France has characteristics beyond that of so many people doping that we've just about come all the way back around to a level playing field again. Stop interrupting.
The climb has gained notoriety over the years as one of the most difficult, downright brutal ascents in France, despite an elevation of only 6,263 feet, with no trees to provide shade, winds that blow riders all over the road, and the knowledge in the back of every cyclist's mind that the climb has in the past taken a life. In the 1967 Tour, Tom Simpson of the United Kingdom rode himself to exhaustion, collapsing and dying one kilometer from the summit. His last words were "Put me back on my bike." A memorial stands where he fell.
...what now? Oh, fine, let me go look. ....yes, he had amphetamines on him when he died. Shut up already.
In any case, there is more to this mountain than a bike race. This peak, while brutal to bikes, does not pose a great deal of challenge to straight climbers, though the lack of trees might necessitate carrying a decent amount of water. Mont Ventoux, because of that ease to ascend without a bike, is therefore about as good a mountain as any to be considered the birthplace of mountaineering.
To be sure, mountains have been climbed since time immemorial. But before 1336, it was done purely out of necessity- migration, military maneuvers, some sort of religious purpose. Mountains were not climbed merely to be climbed. However, on April 26, the Italian poet Petrarch, alongside his brother and a pair of servants, became the first to do it for fun. As he wrote after his climb, in 'The Ascent of Mont Ventoux', he states right off the bat, "To-day I made the ascent of the highest mountain in this region, which is not improperly called Ventosum. My only motive was the wish to see what so great an elevation had to offer." Certainly he was not doing it to be first to the peak. Petrarch himself met someone who had, many years before, gotten to the top, but while the exact reason is not stated in the text, Petrarch's predecessor certainly did not have fun...
"We found an old shepherd in one of the mountain dales, who tried, at great length, to dissuade us from the ascent, saying that some fifty years before he had, in the same ardour of youth, reached the summit, but had gotten for his pains nothing except fatigue and regret, and clothes and body torn by the rocks and briars."
Petrarch was no expert climber. The easiest way to get up mountains is generally to find a ridge- the high road, basically- and follow that. By taking the high road, you are, obviously, climbing from a higher position, making for a flatter incline. Petrarch's brother followed this guideline, but Petrarch describes in the text how he instead elected to take valley routes, which is fine at the start of an ascent, but you have to cover the same amount of vertical either way, and a valley route just makes you do the vertical all at once at the end. Petrarch made this mistake several times, picking routes that in fact descended at some points.
"Suffice it to say that, much to my vexation and my brother's amusement, I made this same mistake three times or more during a few hours."
He did, of course, eventually reach the summit, and there, staring out into the distance, is where Petrarch cemented Mont Ventoux's place in the climbing world, not as a challenge, not as a feat, but as a pilgrimage:
"At first, owing to the unaccustomed quality of the air and the effect of the great sweep of view spread out before me, I stood like one dazed. I beheld the clouds under our feet, and what I had read of Athos and Olympus seemed less incredible as I myself witnessed the same things from a mountain of less fame. I turned my eyes toward Italy, whither my heart most inclined. The Alps, rugged and snow-capped, seemed to rise close by, although they were really at a great distance; the very same Alps through which that fierce enemy of the Roman name once made his way, bursting the rocks, if we may believe the report, by the application of vinegar. I sighed, I must confess, for the skies of Italy, which I beheld rather with my mind than with my eyes. An inexpressible longing came over me to see once more my friend and my country. At the same time I reproached myself for this double weakness, springing, as it did, from a soul not yet steeled to manly resistance."
And so it is that, to this day, when not occupied by the Tour de France, Mont Ventoux is occupied by climbers that, if they so choose, can follow Petrarch's exact route, GR4.
And not all of them are on steroids.
...what?
...Well, you are now. Go with it.
Mont Ventoux, when AND IF you think of it, you know as one of the more storied climbs in the Tour de France.
...Yes, the Tour de France has characteristics beyond that of so many people doping that we've just about come all the way back around to a level playing field again. Stop interrupting.
The climb has gained notoriety over the years as one of the most difficult, downright brutal ascents in France, despite an elevation of only 6,263 feet, with no trees to provide shade, winds that blow riders all over the road, and the knowledge in the back of every cyclist's mind that the climb has in the past taken a life. In the 1967 Tour, Tom Simpson of the United Kingdom rode himself to exhaustion, collapsing and dying one kilometer from the summit. His last words were "Put me back on my bike." A memorial stands where he fell.
...what now? Oh, fine, let me go look. ....yes, he had amphetamines on him when he died. Shut up already.
In any case, there is more to this mountain than a bike race. This peak, while brutal to bikes, does not pose a great deal of challenge to straight climbers, though the lack of trees might necessitate carrying a decent amount of water. Mont Ventoux, because of that ease to ascend without a bike, is therefore about as good a mountain as any to be considered the birthplace of mountaineering.
To be sure, mountains have been climbed since time immemorial. But before 1336, it was done purely out of necessity- migration, military maneuvers, some sort of religious purpose. Mountains were not climbed merely to be climbed. However, on April 26, the Italian poet Petrarch, alongside his brother and a pair of servants, became the first to do it for fun. As he wrote after his climb, in 'The Ascent of Mont Ventoux', he states right off the bat, "To-day I made the ascent of the highest mountain in this region, which is not improperly called Ventosum. My only motive was the wish to see what so great an elevation had to offer." Certainly he was not doing it to be first to the peak. Petrarch himself met someone who had, many years before, gotten to the top, but while the exact reason is not stated in the text, Petrarch's predecessor certainly did not have fun...
"We found an old shepherd in one of the mountain dales, who tried, at great length, to dissuade us from the ascent, saying that some fifty years before he had, in the same ardour of youth, reached the summit, but had gotten for his pains nothing except fatigue and regret, and clothes and body torn by the rocks and briars."
Petrarch was no expert climber. The easiest way to get up mountains is generally to find a ridge- the high road, basically- and follow that. By taking the high road, you are, obviously, climbing from a higher position, making for a flatter incline. Petrarch's brother followed this guideline, but Petrarch describes in the text how he instead elected to take valley routes, which is fine at the start of an ascent, but you have to cover the same amount of vertical either way, and a valley route just makes you do the vertical all at once at the end. Petrarch made this mistake several times, picking routes that in fact descended at some points.
"Suffice it to say that, much to my vexation and my brother's amusement, I made this same mistake three times or more during a few hours."
He did, of course, eventually reach the summit, and there, staring out into the distance, is where Petrarch cemented Mont Ventoux's place in the climbing world, not as a challenge, not as a feat, but as a pilgrimage:
"At first, owing to the unaccustomed quality of the air and the effect of the great sweep of view spread out before me, I stood like one dazed. I beheld the clouds under our feet, and what I had read of Athos and Olympus seemed less incredible as I myself witnessed the same things from a mountain of less fame. I turned my eyes toward Italy, whither my heart most inclined. The Alps, rugged and snow-capped, seemed to rise close by, although they were really at a great distance; the very same Alps through which that fierce enemy of the Roman name once made his way, bursting the rocks, if we may believe the report, by the application of vinegar. I sighed, I must confess, for the skies of Italy, which I beheld rather with my mind than with my eyes. An inexpressible longing came over me to see once more my friend and my country. At the same time I reproached myself for this double weakness, springing, as it did, from a soul not yet steeled to manly resistance."
And so it is that, to this day, when not occupied by the Tour de France, Mont Ventoux is occupied by climbers that, if they so choose, can follow Petrarch's exact route, GR4.
And not all of them are on steroids.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Super Bowl XLV Simulation
It's two days to the Super Bowl. Big game, well aware. But remember, in the end it's just a football game. Win or lose, the world's got other issues to sort out, chief among them the general political upheaval in the Middle East and northern Africa- Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, Yemen, Jordan, Israel's growing sense of unease, and it appears Syria made a run at being added to the list but the attempt fizzled quickly. Not to mention Iraq, of course.
So keep some perspective. Don't be the man who, as Bob Fenster wrote in Well, Duh! Our Stupid World, and Welcome to It, called an Arizona newspaper on December 7, 1941, while the Pearl Harbor attack was underway, asking for the score of a game between the Chicago Bears and then-Chicago Cardinals, saying "Aren't you getting anything besides that war stuff?" (For the record, the Bears won, 34-24.)
In that spirit, something I do every year before the Super Bowl is run a pregame simulation. Most people, for this purpose, use Madden. I consider this cliche, and so I pick something else.
This year, I've chosen The Bigs 2, with 2009 rosters.
'But Aaron', you are asking, 'the Super Bowl is football. The Bigs is a baseball game.' To that I say: shut your fool mouth. You are also saying 'Green Bay doesn't have a baseball team.' The Packers, for many decades, used to play home games in Milwaukee as well, three a season. So using Milwaukee as a substitute is perfectly valid.
Since the Packers are nominally the "home" team, the matchup is thus Pirates at Brewers, but since the game's in Arlington, Texas, the setting is the Rangers Ballpark at Arlington. Standard length is 5 innings, but today we're doing 9.
Starting lineups:
PITTSBURGH
1- Nyjer Morgan, LF
2- Freddy Sanchez, 2B
3- Nate McLouth, CF
4- Ryan Doumit, C
5- Adam LaRoche, 1B
6- Andy Laroche, 3B
7- Brandon Moss, RF
8- Jack Wilson, SS
9- Paul Maholm, P
MILWAUKEE
1- Rickie Weeks, 2B
2- Corey Hart, RF
3- Ryan Braun, LF
4- Prince Fielder, 1B
5- J.J. Hardy, SS
6- Mike Cameron, CF
7- Bill Hall, 3B
8- Jason Kendall, C
9- Yovani Gallardo, P
TOP 1ST: Morgan beats out a grounder to short, Sanchez isn't so lucky, though he advances Morgan to second. McLouth grounds to third. Doumit tags the first pitch and Hardy can't hang onto it, but Gallardo grabs the rebound and throws to first, beating Doumit to the bag and retiring the side.
BOTTOM 1ST: Weeks slaps one to left-center for a double. Hart strikes out, but on the third strike Weeks takes off for third and barely beats out the tag. Braun drives a deep fly ball to center, only to see McLouth rob him of a home run; however, he still sacrifices Weeks home. Brewers lead 1-0. Fielder also gives the ball a ride to center, but McLouth robs him too for the third out.
TOP 2ND: Adam Laroche decides he wants to try to play Home Run Derby too, and Mike Cameron decides he wants to play Home Run Killjoy too.
Commentator Damon Bruce: "Hahahahahaha. Wwwwwelcometothebigs!"
Andy grounds to second, Moss to first. Three up, three down, still 1-0 Milwaukee.
BOTTOM 2ND: Hardy starts with a worm-scorcher to left for a single. After an unsuccessful pickoff attempt, Maholm gives up a double to Cameron, putting two in scoring position. Hall makes the attempt to score them, but Wilson comes up with a big catch at short. Kendall grounds out to first, but moves the runners up and scores Hardy in the process, making it 2-0. Gallardo actually hits one to the warning track in left, but Nyjer Morgan gets under it and ends the inning.
TOP 3RD: Wilson hits one to the gap, or at least he would have had Cameron not closed said gap. Maholm grounds weakly to first, Morgan to second, end of inning.
BOTTOM 3RD: Rickie Weeks hits a chopper to second and Freddy Sanchez beats him on the throw to first. Hart smacks a ground ball to center for a single. Braun makes another excursion into deep center, only for Nate McLouth to be waiting to make the catch again. Fielder once again has a potential home run robbed, this time by Morgan. It remains 2-0 Brewers.
TOP 4TH: Sanchez puts a single into the left-field corner. McLouth hits one to right, but Hart gets under it in time. Ryan Doumit, seeing the game slipping away early and wanting to put things right while there's still time, activates the Big Slam.
Ah yes. The Big Slam, one of The Bigs 2's features. Here, the next four batters get one swing each, though Pittsburgh might only get three as Sanchez is already on base. Make contact with the ball and you hit it. Anyone that cannot theoretically come up with the bases loaded is looking for a single and, if they miss, won't count as an out for some reason that developer Blue Castle Games and publisher 2K Sports never bothered to explain. Whoever comes up after that is swinging for the fences.
Doumit swings and misses. Adam LaRoche misses too. Andy LaRoche, though, puts one in the luxury box, tying us at 2.
Moss flies weakly to Hart, and Wilson grounds to Hall.
BOTTOM 4TH: Hardy hits a double to right-center. Cameron strikes out on three pitches. Hall grounds out to Adam LaRoche. Kendall hits a frozen rope to center, scoring Hardy. 3-2 Brewers. Gallardo grounds to third for the final out, stranding Kendall.
TOP 5TH: Bill Hall snags a pitential base hit by Maholm out of the air. Prince Fielder takes a routine grounder by Morgan, but can't hold on to a line drive by Sanchez, leaving Corey Hart to field it for him. Since errors aren't scored in The Bigs, that gives Sanchez his second hit of the day. McLouth flies out to center, ending the inning.
BOTTOM 5TH: Weeks whiffs on a 104-mph Paul Maholm fastball, which he threw despite the fact that not even in an unrealistic videogame should Paul Maholm be able to do that without jaw-dropping quantities of steroids, but then rips one to center and gets a triple out of it. Hart grounds out, but easily scores Weeks. Braun hits a lazy chopper to Sanchez. Fielder, with the Brewers up 4-2 with two out, powers up the Big Slam with the bases empty. Fielder connects. Hardy connects. Cameron misses. Hall, with the assistance of dramatic slow-motion cutscenes, deposits his pitch three luxury boxes to the left of where Andy LaRoche went with his. 7-2.
Damon Bruce: "Well, luckily, most people who sit in luxury boxes can afford plastic surgery."
Kendall rearranges Wilson's face on a line drive, but Andy LaRoche picks up the ball and records the third out.
TOP 6TH: Hardy dives on a Doumit grounder and beats him with a throw to first. Adam LaRoche hits a comebacker to Gallardo, handled ably. Andy hits a fly ball to Braun, but Braun muffs it and gives up a triple. Moss can't score him, though, grounding out to Hall.
BOTTOM 6TH: Gallardo grounds to Wilson. Weeks takes an 0-2 pitch and sends it screaming to the left-centerfield gap. Hart goes to the same place, scoring a triple and Weeks. 8-2. Braun strikes out. Fielder hits a seeing-eye single to the right side, scoring Hart and making it 9-2 Milwaukee. Sanchez fields a Hardy grounder.
TOP 7TH: Wilson goes for the fences, but Cameron intercepts him at the warning track, and then dives to catch a Maholm fly ball to right. Nyjer Morgan hits one down the left-field line for a single. Hardy beats Sanchez on a throw to first, and the inning is over.
BOTTOM 7TH: Maholm's day is done, as Tyler Yates comes on to pitch in relief. Cameron grounds to first. Hall strikes out. Wilson ably fields a Braun grounder, and that's the inning.
TOP 8TH: David Riske comes in to relieve Gallardo. Always a Riske decision there. What's more risky is Braun, who again fumbles a fly ball, this time from McLouth; it allows a double. Doumit hits a screamer to J.J. Hardy, who shows Braun how people actually catch balls in The Bigs. Adam LaRoche sacrifices McLouth to third. Andy becomes another victim of Hardy's glove, and McLouth is stranded at third.
BOTTOM 8TH: Andy LaRoche bobbles a Riske hit, but picks it back up in time to throw him out at first. Weeks strikes out. Hart hits a solid double to left-center; he tries to take off for third, but Braun fouls the pitch off, because Ryan Braun can't do anything right. And then Braun hits the third out to Freddy Sanchez, making him 0-4 on the day. You suck, Ryan Braun.
TOP 9TH:
Trevor Time.
Moss lines out to Weeks. Hoffman activates Big Heat, which gives a huge boost to whatever it is he's throwing. As if Pittsburgh needed anything more to worry about. Wilson is duly blown away. The Pirates send in Eric Hinske as a pinch-hitter, which Trevor Hoffman responds to by... activating Big Heat again. Hinske never stands a chance.
That's the ballgame. Milwaukee-- I mean, Green Bay 9, Pittsburgh 2.
Which is a theoretical football score.
So keep some perspective. Don't be the man who, as Bob Fenster wrote in Well, Duh! Our Stupid World, and Welcome to It, called an Arizona newspaper on December 7, 1941, while the Pearl Harbor attack was underway, asking for the score of a game between the Chicago Bears and then-Chicago Cardinals, saying "Aren't you getting anything besides that war stuff?" (For the record, the Bears won, 34-24.)
In that spirit, something I do every year before the Super Bowl is run a pregame simulation. Most people, for this purpose, use Madden. I consider this cliche, and so I pick something else.
This year, I've chosen The Bigs 2, with 2009 rosters.
'But Aaron', you are asking, 'the Super Bowl is football. The Bigs is a baseball game.' To that I say: shut your fool mouth. You are also saying 'Green Bay doesn't have a baseball team.' The Packers, for many decades, used to play home games in Milwaukee as well, three a season. So using Milwaukee as a substitute is perfectly valid.
Since the Packers are nominally the "home" team, the matchup is thus Pirates at Brewers, but since the game's in Arlington, Texas, the setting is the Rangers Ballpark at Arlington. Standard length is 5 innings, but today we're doing 9.
Starting lineups:
PITTSBURGH
1- Nyjer Morgan, LF
2- Freddy Sanchez, 2B
3- Nate McLouth, CF
4- Ryan Doumit, C
5- Adam LaRoche, 1B
6- Andy Laroche, 3B
7- Brandon Moss, RF
8- Jack Wilson, SS
9- Paul Maholm, P
MILWAUKEE
1- Rickie Weeks, 2B
2- Corey Hart, RF
3- Ryan Braun, LF
4- Prince Fielder, 1B
5- J.J. Hardy, SS
6- Mike Cameron, CF
7- Bill Hall, 3B
8- Jason Kendall, C
9- Yovani Gallardo, P
TOP 1ST: Morgan beats out a grounder to short, Sanchez isn't so lucky, though he advances Morgan to second. McLouth grounds to third. Doumit tags the first pitch and Hardy can't hang onto it, but Gallardo grabs the rebound and throws to first, beating Doumit to the bag and retiring the side.
BOTTOM 1ST: Weeks slaps one to left-center for a double. Hart strikes out, but on the third strike Weeks takes off for third and barely beats out the tag. Braun drives a deep fly ball to center, only to see McLouth rob him of a home run; however, he still sacrifices Weeks home. Brewers lead 1-0. Fielder also gives the ball a ride to center, but McLouth robs him too for the third out.
TOP 2ND: Adam Laroche decides he wants to try to play Home Run Derby too, and Mike Cameron decides he wants to play Home Run Killjoy too.
Commentator Damon Bruce: "Hahahahahaha. Wwwwwelcometothebigs!"
Andy grounds to second, Moss to first. Three up, three down, still 1-0 Milwaukee.
BOTTOM 2ND: Hardy starts with a worm-scorcher to left for a single. After an unsuccessful pickoff attempt, Maholm gives up a double to Cameron, putting two in scoring position. Hall makes the attempt to score them, but Wilson comes up with a big catch at short. Kendall grounds out to first, but moves the runners up and scores Hardy in the process, making it 2-0. Gallardo actually hits one to the warning track in left, but Nyjer Morgan gets under it and ends the inning.
TOP 3RD: Wilson hits one to the gap, or at least he would have had Cameron not closed said gap. Maholm grounds weakly to first, Morgan to second, end of inning.
BOTTOM 3RD: Rickie Weeks hits a chopper to second and Freddy Sanchez beats him on the throw to first. Hart smacks a ground ball to center for a single. Braun makes another excursion into deep center, only for Nate McLouth to be waiting to make the catch again. Fielder once again has a potential home run robbed, this time by Morgan. It remains 2-0 Brewers.
TOP 4TH: Sanchez puts a single into the left-field corner. McLouth hits one to right, but Hart gets under it in time. Ryan Doumit, seeing the game slipping away early and wanting to put things right while there's still time, activates the Big Slam.
Ah yes. The Big Slam, one of The Bigs 2's features. Here, the next four batters get one swing each, though Pittsburgh might only get three as Sanchez is already on base. Make contact with the ball and you hit it. Anyone that cannot theoretically come up with the bases loaded is looking for a single and, if they miss, won't count as an out for some reason that developer Blue Castle Games and publisher 2K Sports never bothered to explain. Whoever comes up after that is swinging for the fences.
Doumit swings and misses. Adam LaRoche misses too. Andy LaRoche, though, puts one in the luxury box, tying us at 2.
Moss flies weakly to Hart, and Wilson grounds to Hall.
BOTTOM 4TH: Hardy hits a double to right-center. Cameron strikes out on three pitches. Hall grounds out to Adam LaRoche. Kendall hits a frozen rope to center, scoring Hardy. 3-2 Brewers. Gallardo grounds to third for the final out, stranding Kendall.
TOP 5TH: Bill Hall snags a pitential base hit by Maholm out of the air. Prince Fielder takes a routine grounder by Morgan, but can't hold on to a line drive by Sanchez, leaving Corey Hart to field it for him. Since errors aren't scored in The Bigs, that gives Sanchez his second hit of the day. McLouth flies out to center, ending the inning.
BOTTOM 5TH: Weeks whiffs on a 104-mph Paul Maholm fastball, which he threw despite the fact that not even in an unrealistic videogame should Paul Maholm be able to do that without jaw-dropping quantities of steroids, but then rips one to center and gets a triple out of it. Hart grounds out, but easily scores Weeks. Braun hits a lazy chopper to Sanchez. Fielder, with the Brewers up 4-2 with two out, powers up the Big Slam with the bases empty. Fielder connects. Hardy connects. Cameron misses. Hall, with the assistance of dramatic slow-motion cutscenes, deposits his pitch three luxury boxes to the left of where Andy LaRoche went with his. 7-2.
Damon Bruce: "Well, luckily, most people who sit in luxury boxes can afford plastic surgery."
Kendall rearranges Wilson's face on a line drive, but Andy LaRoche picks up the ball and records the third out.
TOP 6TH: Hardy dives on a Doumit grounder and beats him with a throw to first. Adam LaRoche hits a comebacker to Gallardo, handled ably. Andy hits a fly ball to Braun, but Braun muffs it and gives up a triple. Moss can't score him, though, grounding out to Hall.
BOTTOM 6TH: Gallardo grounds to Wilson. Weeks takes an 0-2 pitch and sends it screaming to the left-centerfield gap. Hart goes to the same place, scoring a triple and Weeks. 8-2. Braun strikes out. Fielder hits a seeing-eye single to the right side, scoring Hart and making it 9-2 Milwaukee. Sanchez fields a Hardy grounder.
TOP 7TH: Wilson goes for the fences, but Cameron intercepts him at the warning track, and then dives to catch a Maholm fly ball to right. Nyjer Morgan hits one down the left-field line for a single. Hardy beats Sanchez on a throw to first, and the inning is over.
BOTTOM 7TH: Maholm's day is done, as Tyler Yates comes on to pitch in relief. Cameron grounds to first. Hall strikes out. Wilson ably fields a Braun grounder, and that's the inning.
TOP 8TH: David Riske comes in to relieve Gallardo. Always a Riske decision there. What's more risky is Braun, who again fumbles a fly ball, this time from McLouth; it allows a double. Doumit hits a screamer to J.J. Hardy, who shows Braun how people actually catch balls in The Bigs. Adam LaRoche sacrifices McLouth to third. Andy becomes another victim of Hardy's glove, and McLouth is stranded at third.
BOTTOM 8TH: Andy LaRoche bobbles a Riske hit, but picks it back up in time to throw him out at first. Weeks strikes out. Hart hits a solid double to left-center; he tries to take off for third, but Braun fouls the pitch off, because Ryan Braun can't do anything right. And then Braun hits the third out to Freddy Sanchez, making him 0-4 on the day. You suck, Ryan Braun.
TOP 9TH:
Trevor Time.
Moss lines out to Weeks. Hoffman activates Big Heat, which gives a huge boost to whatever it is he's throwing. As if Pittsburgh needed anything more to worry about. Wilson is duly blown away. The Pirates send in Eric Hinske as a pinch-hitter, which Trevor Hoffman responds to by... activating Big Heat again. Hinske never stands a chance.
That's the ballgame. Milwaukee-- I mean, Green Bay 9, Pittsburgh 2.
Which is a theoretical football score.
Monday, January 31, 2011
The Nika Riots
It is one week to the Super Bowl, and while Packers and Steelers fans are plenty passionate, win or lose, one can reasonably expect both sides to retain enough composure to refrain from overturning cars or breaking storefront windows. And even if they can't, they certainly won't band together and threaten to overthrow the Bears-loving Obama administration.
You know where we're going with this, right?
Back in the Roman Empire, and continuing into the Byzantine, chariot racing was one of the sports of choice. There were four chariot teams in Istanbul (then Constantinople)- the Reds, Blues, Greens and Whites; however, at the time we'll be looking at, the Blues and Greens had basically killed off the Reds and Whites. The fans were passionate beyond almost anything in modern times, with rivalries going far past Yankees-Red Sox and more along the lines of Partizan-Red Star, as team members tended to take political views as well, often shouting these views during races.
It didn't help that, in previous years, emperor Anastasius had abolished two other sources of entertainment, the venationes (animal hunts) and pantomimes (a tad raunchier than the mimes we know today), which put even more importance on the chariots than usual.
On January 10, 532 CE (remember, it's not BC and AD anymore; it's BCE and CE), some Blue and Green partisans were to be hanged for murders that had happened during a recent bout of hooliganism. Most were. For one Blue and one Green, though, the hanging was botched, and they managed to escape into a church.
Justinian, the current emperor (and a Blue supporter), was not a giving man. Taxes didn't quite go far enough for him. When someone rich died, Justinian was prone to claiming that their will left him all their money. When a noble was held for ransom, Justinian claimed that the noble agreed with his decision to not pay the ransom, and then took the ransom money himself. He confiscated military bonuses, claiming that he won the peace and the soldiers should be happy to reward him.
Each faction was more than willing to help their fellow partisan out, and since there was one Blue and one Green, there was a united mob protecting the two, calling for them to be pardoned. When Justinian instead only commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, the Blues and Greens had a literally old-fashioned sports riot, with fires set all over Constantinople. Three days later, another race day was held at the Hippodrome, the stadium these races were held at and which Justianian's palace conveniently overlooked.
The people had plenty of gripes with the emperor, and while this wasn't their greatest concern, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Instead of shouts in favor of the Blues or Greens, everyone shouted 'Nika'- 'victory' or 'conquer'- towards the palace. It wasn't hard to figure out what they wanted to conquer. Justinian certainly knew. There was a five-day bout of rioting. The situation was serious enough that some opportunistic senators declared a new emperor, Green supporter Hypatius. Again, a mob formed around the two partisans, but this time, when they were refused, the prison was burned down with the two inside, as was, among other things, the Hagia Sophia.
Justinian ran for his life, taking along his inner circle, including his wife, Theodora. But on the way to exile, Theodora stopped and stirred Justinian's resolve, expressing that she would rather die than run. The exact quote appears in question, but here we'll go with "Purple is a fine burial shroud." Well, if the wife was willing to fight, Justinian couldn't well run now, could he?
Part of the inner circle were two of Justinian's best generals, Belisarius and Mundus, who the emperor quickly put to use, as well as a eunuch, Narsus. Narsus was sent alone to Hypatius' coronation at the Hippodrome, the base of operations, with a bag of gold, and confronted the Blues with the reminder that Justinian was a Blue himself, while Hypatius was a Green.
This proved persuasive. The Blues, after some discussion, walked out of the coronation. The Greens couldn't believe it.
Meanwhile, Belisarius and Mundus had maneuvered themselves to opposite ends of the Hippodrome, sealing in the Greens and any Blues that were still there. Every rioter still in the Hippodrome after the walkout was slaughtered, totaling some 30,000 dead.
That was that. Justinian had reasserted control. Just to be safe, he also executed the senators who put Hypatius up as emperor, as well as Hypatius himself. He was in fact stronger than when the whole mess had started; he would never be so threatened again. Much of that money he had built up, along with a whole lot more he would proceed to take, would be put towards rebuilding Constantinople.
If you're in Istanbul, stop by and check out the work he had done on the Hagia Sophia.
You know where we're going with this, right?
Back in the Roman Empire, and continuing into the Byzantine, chariot racing was one of the sports of choice. There were four chariot teams in Istanbul (then Constantinople)- the Reds, Blues, Greens and Whites; however, at the time we'll be looking at, the Blues and Greens had basically killed off the Reds and Whites. The fans were passionate beyond almost anything in modern times, with rivalries going far past Yankees-Red Sox and more along the lines of Partizan-Red Star, as team members tended to take political views as well, often shouting these views during races.
It didn't help that, in previous years, emperor Anastasius had abolished two other sources of entertainment, the venationes (animal hunts) and pantomimes (a tad raunchier than the mimes we know today), which put even more importance on the chariots than usual.
On January 10, 532 CE (remember, it's not BC and AD anymore; it's BCE and CE), some Blue and Green partisans were to be hanged for murders that had happened during a recent bout of hooliganism. Most were. For one Blue and one Green, though, the hanging was botched, and they managed to escape into a church.
Justinian, the current emperor (and a Blue supporter), was not a giving man. Taxes didn't quite go far enough for him. When someone rich died, Justinian was prone to claiming that their will left him all their money. When a noble was held for ransom, Justinian claimed that the noble agreed with his decision to not pay the ransom, and then took the ransom money himself. He confiscated military bonuses, claiming that he won the peace and the soldiers should be happy to reward him.
Each faction was more than willing to help their fellow partisan out, and since there was one Blue and one Green, there was a united mob protecting the two, calling for them to be pardoned. When Justinian instead only commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, the Blues and Greens had a literally old-fashioned sports riot, with fires set all over Constantinople. Three days later, another race day was held at the Hippodrome, the stadium these races were held at and which Justianian's palace conveniently overlooked.
The people had plenty of gripes with the emperor, and while this wasn't their greatest concern, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Instead of shouts in favor of the Blues or Greens, everyone shouted 'Nika'- 'victory' or 'conquer'- towards the palace. It wasn't hard to figure out what they wanted to conquer. Justinian certainly knew. There was a five-day bout of rioting. The situation was serious enough that some opportunistic senators declared a new emperor, Green supporter Hypatius. Again, a mob formed around the two partisans, but this time, when they were refused, the prison was burned down with the two inside, as was, among other things, the Hagia Sophia.
Justinian ran for his life, taking along his inner circle, including his wife, Theodora. But on the way to exile, Theodora stopped and stirred Justinian's resolve, expressing that she would rather die than run. The exact quote appears in question, but here we'll go with "Purple is a fine burial shroud." Well, if the wife was willing to fight, Justinian couldn't well run now, could he?
Part of the inner circle were two of Justinian's best generals, Belisarius and Mundus, who the emperor quickly put to use, as well as a eunuch, Narsus. Narsus was sent alone to Hypatius' coronation at the Hippodrome, the base of operations, with a bag of gold, and confronted the Blues with the reminder that Justinian was a Blue himself, while Hypatius was a Green.
This proved persuasive. The Blues, after some discussion, walked out of the coronation. The Greens couldn't believe it.
Meanwhile, Belisarius and Mundus had maneuvered themselves to opposite ends of the Hippodrome, sealing in the Greens and any Blues that were still there. Every rioter still in the Hippodrome after the walkout was slaughtered, totaling some 30,000 dead.
That was that. Justinian had reasserted control. Just to be safe, he also executed the senators who put Hypatius up as emperor, as well as Hypatius himself. He was in fact stronger than when the whole mess had started; he would never be so threatened again. Much of that money he had built up, along with a whole lot more he would proceed to take, would be put towards rebuilding Constantinople.
If you're in Istanbul, stop by and check out the work he had done on the Hagia Sophia.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Green And Yellow Edition
First off, clearly, this must be done.
And an NFC Champions shirt must be bought. That done, an addition to the Rapid-Fire Book Club was done in the meantime; there was a Barnes & Noble gift card that needed a workout.
Bathroom Readers' Institute- Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: Colossal Collection of Quotable Quotes
Fuller, Alexandra- Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (suggested by someone on a Fark thread)
Grant, John- Discarded Science: Ideas That Seemed Good at the Time...
Sass, Erik; Wiegand, Steve- The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp Through Civilization's Best Bits
In addition, my birthday brought three Penny Arcade collections: The Warsun Prophecies, Birds Are Weird, and The Case of the Mummy's Gold, which makes that a complete set of the first six books there.
In conclusion, in the interest of equal time, here is the Steelers' equivalent song.
And an NFC Champions shirt must be bought. That done, an addition to the Rapid-Fire Book Club was done in the meantime; there was a Barnes & Noble gift card that needed a workout.
Bathroom Readers' Institute- Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: Colossal Collection of Quotable Quotes
Fuller, Alexandra- Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (suggested by someone on a Fark thread)
Grant, John- Discarded Science: Ideas That Seemed Good at the Time...
Sass, Erik; Wiegand, Steve- The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp Through Civilization's Best Bits
In addition, my birthday brought three Penny Arcade collections: The Warsun Prophecies, Birds Are Weird, and The Case of the Mummy's Gold, which makes that a complete set of the first six books there.
In conclusion, in the interest of equal time, here is the Steelers' equivalent song.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Houses Made of Diamonds: A Bad Investment
The Mega Millions jackpot has gone unclaimed for long enough that the jackpot has grown to $290 million. This is about the point where everybody and their mother buys a ticket and fantasizes about what they're going to do with $290 million; the linked article, although brief, makes sure you know about some of the larger jackpots claimed in lottery history. Not even former jackpot winners are immune from the lure of a second payday.
Far too often, these same people, after winning these gigantic jackpots, are found years later broke, miserable, and wishing they had never bought the ticket at all.
So where do so many people go astray? My theory is that a lot of the winners simply have no real-world concept of the larger jackpots. One it gets up into $290 million territory, the number... the exact number is irrelevant. The previous jackpot was $242 million, but the $48 million difference does not register. It all reads "$Texas" to some people. If this jackpot goes unclaimed, and it climbs past $300 million, it won't make much difference there either. When it's given to you in one big pile, it looks like All The Money In The World. Which as people who are actually rich for a living will tell you, it is not.
This is if you take the lump sum option, at least. If you were to split that up into 30 parts, as would happen in an annuity, it's still a lot of money, but one is much more easily able to wrap their head around the idea of $10 million as opposed to the idea of $300 million.
The problem is, despite any argument you may hear about which of the two payment options is better- the lump-sum or the annuity- when it actually comes time for the winners to choose, it turns out to be barely a debate at all. Winners almost unanimously pick the lump-sum, shown on the official Powerball website as "cash", save for the smallest of jackpots. Since 2003, Powerball records only three winners as having gone to the annuity, with the three jackpots having sat at $18.7 million, $19.8 million, and $20 million. One additional group opted for 'mixed'- which means at least one person took lump-sum and at least one person took the annuity- and this jackpot was quite large: $208.6 million. The jackpot was, however, split among 100 people, and 99 of these 100 winners chose the lump sum, leaving just over $2 million for the person who opted for the annuity. Every other winner since 2003, every single other person, has taken the lump sum.
And this costs all of these winners roughly half of their jackpot straightaway, even before taxes. What a lot of people don't realize is that the amount advertised is the amount they think you'd get if you took the annuity. The Powerball people have this misconception covered in their FAQ:
Here's the other thing. You only win that jackpot once. As earlier stated, when you first come into such a large amount of money, it's hard to wrap your head around it, and a fair amount of people get blinded by that. Sometimes they get their heads back on straight. Sometimes they don't. But with the annuity, you've got 30 attempts to figure out how to deal with the money, spread over 29 years. Eventually, with practice and a bit of smarts, you can figure out how to handle large amounts of money. That's not a guarantee that you will- some people will never get the hang of it- but you give yourself the best possible chance at success. With the lump-sum, you've only got one shot. Blow all the money in the first annuity payment, you've got 29 more coming. You've hopefully got the stupid spending out of your system. Blow all the money in the lump-sum, and that's the ballgame. You're right back to where you were, and sometimes even worse off than when you started if you can't figure out where your winnings end and your pre-existing net worth begins. And if you're the kind of person to blow hundreds of millions of dollars in one big splurge, odds are you can't. If you want more money, you're just going to have to win the lottery twice.
Good luck with that.
And that bit of smarts is a crucial factor. To see why, you need only look to another source of windfall income: professional sports. You've surely heard about the lack of emphasis in college football and college basketball on actually educating the students and the increased emphasis in finding talent for the NFL and NBA. (Ask yourself: when's the last time you saw a televised game mention a student's major?) There's little to be said about all the college kids that never make the pros. There's no windfall for them, and so there's nothing really to discuss. The players that do make the pros, however, having had such a focus on making the pros, come out of their schooling ill-prepared to handle the giant amounts of money given to them. They were steered towards the next game. They had teachers under pressure to give them good enough grades to make them academically eligible to play. Players at big-name programs are routinely funneled into specific classes regardless of what they actually want to be studying, for the purposes of having large segments of the team in the same place. Often, the students left college early. In some scattered cases in the NBA, including that of Lebron James and Kobe Bryant, they never went to college at all.
What happens when the bright lights go away? Most of them, never having gotten the kind of financial education they needed for this type of lifestyle, and in some cases having what education they did get beaten out of them on the field, quickly go broke. According to a March 2009 article from Sports Illustrated's Pablo S. Torre, 60% of all NBA players, regardless of money earned or time in the league, are broke within five years of their departure. 78% of all NFL players, regardless of money earned or length of time in the league, are broke within two years. Athletes on the financial scrapheap can be easily found regardless of the sport. The article did not show the figures for Major League Baseball, but listed the former players in similar situations as "numerous". The fourth page of the article even comes right out and says:
And it doesn't just happen in those three leagues. Here you'll find a list of 25 athletes who went broke. Just 25. In addition to the NFL, NBA and MLB, you'll also find representation from the NHL, soccer, track, boxing, tennis, the WNBA, even figure skating, represented by Dorothy Hamill. Michael Vick made the list at #4 prior to his comeback.
There's one key difference between athletes and lottery winners, though. Lottery winners choose when they get to play. High-level athletes, unless mandated otherwise, are usually pressured by the demands of any given sport to focus on it as soon as physically capable. If you wait until you've gotten your college degree to focus on it, it's too late. They're already looking at the kids coming up behind you. As a result, few athletes get the education they need to handle any sort of windfall payout, and most are dumped by the financial wayside.
Quick, how many players or managers in MLB on June 1, 2009 had a college degree of any kind? 26. That's enough to fill one team. Out of thirty.
However, it takes no skill to play a lottery. Drive down to the gas station and hand the cashier a dollar. You don't even have to pick your own numbers if you don't feel like it. And you can play whenever you want. You can get lottery tickets as birthday presents the day you turn legal. You can be 90 years old and in a wheelchair and still have enough physical capability to say "Quick Pick".
What that means is that before you play the lottery, you have all the time you need to go educate yourself on how to handle the money should you win. And even if you don't win, you can still apply the same principles to whatever smaller amounts of money you handle.
If you do win, keep your head on as straight as you can, realize that the money is finite, and really, give some thought to the annuity. Consider letting the lottery people invest that jackpot for you. They handle large amounts of money for a living. They know what they're doing.
And they'd really prefer to not have their winners become cautionary tales.
Far too often, these same people, after winning these gigantic jackpots, are found years later broke, miserable, and wishing they had never bought the ticket at all.
So where do so many people go astray? My theory is that a lot of the winners simply have no real-world concept of the larger jackpots. One it gets up into $290 million territory, the number... the exact number is irrelevant. The previous jackpot was $242 million, but the $48 million difference does not register. It all reads "$Texas" to some people. If this jackpot goes unclaimed, and it climbs past $300 million, it won't make much difference there either. When it's given to you in one big pile, it looks like All The Money In The World. Which as people who are actually rich for a living will tell you, it is not.
This is if you take the lump sum option, at least. If you were to split that up into 30 parts, as would happen in an annuity, it's still a lot of money, but one is much more easily able to wrap their head around the idea of $10 million as opposed to the idea of $300 million.
The problem is, despite any argument you may hear about which of the two payment options is better- the lump-sum or the annuity- when it actually comes time for the winners to choose, it turns out to be barely a debate at all. Winners almost unanimously pick the lump-sum, shown on the official Powerball website as "cash", save for the smallest of jackpots. Since 2003, Powerball records only three winners as having gone to the annuity, with the three jackpots having sat at $18.7 million, $19.8 million, and $20 million. One additional group opted for 'mixed'- which means at least one person took lump-sum and at least one person took the annuity- and this jackpot was quite large: $208.6 million. The jackpot was, however, split among 100 people, and 99 of these 100 winners chose the lump sum, leaving just over $2 million for the person who opted for the annuity. Every other winner since 2003, every single other person, has taken the lump sum.
And this costs all of these winners roughly half of their jackpot straightaway, even before taxes. What a lot of people don't realize is that the amount advertised is the amount they think you'd get if you took the annuity. The Powerball people have this misconception covered in their FAQ:
When we advertise a prize of $100 million paid over 29 years (30 payments), we actually have less than $50 million in cash. When someone wins the jackpot and wants cash, we give them all of the cash in the jackpot prize pool. If the winner wants the annuity, we invest the $50 million in cash to fund the annuity payments. The winner gets the cash plus the interest earned. When you see an estimated jackpot annuity prize, we are estimating both sales and what the market's prices on certain securities will be. The annuity jackpot amount and the cash jackpot amount that we announce are always estimates until sales are final and, for the annuity jackpot, until we take bids on the purchase of securities.
Federal and State Income tax apply to whatever income you actually receive in a given tax year, whether it is wages or lottery prizes. If you take the cash amount (say $50 million), then you pay income tax on $50 million). If you take the annuity (say $100 million), then you pay income tax on the money you actually receive each year. Just like your wages, a withholding amount is required to be taken out immediately. The lottery will send you a W2-G form and you figure your actual tax at tax time.
Here's the other thing. You only win that jackpot once. As earlier stated, when you first come into such a large amount of money, it's hard to wrap your head around it, and a fair amount of people get blinded by that. Sometimes they get their heads back on straight. Sometimes they don't. But with the annuity, you've got 30 attempts to figure out how to deal with the money, spread over 29 years. Eventually, with practice and a bit of smarts, you can figure out how to handle large amounts of money. That's not a guarantee that you will- some people will never get the hang of it- but you give yourself the best possible chance at success. With the lump-sum, you've only got one shot. Blow all the money in the first annuity payment, you've got 29 more coming. You've hopefully got the stupid spending out of your system. Blow all the money in the lump-sum, and that's the ballgame. You're right back to where you were, and sometimes even worse off than when you started if you can't figure out where your winnings end and your pre-existing net worth begins. And if you're the kind of person to blow hundreds of millions of dollars in one big splurge, odds are you can't. If you want more money, you're just going to have to win the lottery twice.
Good luck with that.
And that bit of smarts is a crucial factor. To see why, you need only look to another source of windfall income: professional sports. You've surely heard about the lack of emphasis in college football and college basketball on actually educating the students and the increased emphasis in finding talent for the NFL and NBA. (Ask yourself: when's the last time you saw a televised game mention a student's major?) There's little to be said about all the college kids that never make the pros. There's no windfall for them, and so there's nothing really to discuss. The players that do make the pros, however, having had such a focus on making the pros, come out of their schooling ill-prepared to handle the giant amounts of money given to them. They were steered towards the next game. They had teachers under pressure to give them good enough grades to make them academically eligible to play. Players at big-name programs are routinely funneled into specific classes regardless of what they actually want to be studying, for the purposes of having large segments of the team in the same place. Often, the students left college early. In some scattered cases in the NBA, including that of Lebron James and Kobe Bryant, they never went to college at all.
What happens when the bright lights go away? Most of them, never having gotten the kind of financial education they needed for this type of lifestyle, and in some cases having what education they did get beaten out of them on the field, quickly go broke. According to a March 2009 article from Sports Illustrated's Pablo S. Torre, 60% of all NBA players, regardless of money earned or time in the league, are broke within five years of their departure. 78% of all NFL players, regardless of money earned or length of time in the league, are broke within two years. Athletes on the financial scrapheap can be easily found regardless of the sport. The article did not show the figures for Major League Baseball, but listed the former players in similar situations as "numerous". The fourth page of the article even comes right out and says:
Salary aside, the closest analogue to a pro athlete is not a white-collar executive. It's a lottery winner—who's often in his early twenties. "With athletes, there's an extraordinary metamorphosis of financial challenge," says agent Leigh Steinberg, who has represented the NFL's No. 1 pick a record eight times. "Coming off college scholarships, they probably haven't even learned the basics of budgeting or keeping receipts." Which then triggers two fatal mistakes: hiring the wrong people as advisers, and trusting them far too much.
"That's the killer," Magic Johnson says. Johnson started out by admitting he knew nothing about business and seeking counsel from the power brokers who sat courtside at the old L.A. Forum, men such as Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz and Sony Pictures CEO Peter Guber. Now, Johnson says, he gets calls from star players "every day"—Alex Rodriguez, Shaquille O'Neal, Dwyane Wade, Plaxico Burress—and cuts them short if they propose relying on friends and family. "It won't even be a conversation," says Johnson. "They hire these people not because of expertise but because they're friends. Well, they'll fail."
And it doesn't just happen in those three leagues. Here you'll find a list of 25 athletes who went broke. Just 25. In addition to the NFL, NBA and MLB, you'll also find representation from the NHL, soccer, track, boxing, tennis, the WNBA, even figure skating, represented by Dorothy Hamill. Michael Vick made the list at #4 prior to his comeback.
There's one key difference between athletes and lottery winners, though. Lottery winners choose when they get to play. High-level athletes, unless mandated otherwise, are usually pressured by the demands of any given sport to focus on it as soon as physically capable. If you wait until you've gotten your college degree to focus on it, it's too late. They're already looking at the kids coming up behind you. As a result, few athletes get the education they need to handle any sort of windfall payout, and most are dumped by the financial wayside.
Quick, how many players or managers in MLB on June 1, 2009 had a college degree of any kind? 26. That's enough to fill one team. Out of thirty.
However, it takes no skill to play a lottery. Drive down to the gas station and hand the cashier a dollar. You don't even have to pick your own numbers if you don't feel like it. And you can play whenever you want. You can get lottery tickets as birthday presents the day you turn legal. You can be 90 years old and in a wheelchair and still have enough physical capability to say "Quick Pick".
What that means is that before you play the lottery, you have all the time you need to go educate yourself on how to handle the money should you win. And even if you don't win, you can still apply the same principles to whatever smaller amounts of money you handle.
If you do win, keep your head on as straight as you can, realize that the money is finite, and really, give some thought to the annuity. Consider letting the lottery people invest that jackpot for you. They handle large amounts of money for a living. They know what they're doing.
And they'd really prefer to not have their winners become cautionary tales.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Raise The Roof
Here's a question. What is the world's first retractable-roof stadium?
...who said the Rogers Centre in Toronto (1989)? Nope.
...Civic Arena in Pittsburgh (1961)? Good guess, and that's the conventional-wisdom answer. But there's one earlier.
Try the Roman Colosseum.
Obviously, there was no rigged-up chunk of stone and bronze hanging over the facility. There was, however, a canopy, known as a valerium, which could be draped over the Colosseum on hot days.
An artist's rendering of what this might have looked like:
Yes, there's a hole in the middle, but that really always has been the European definition of a 'roof' as far as stadiums are concerned: cover the fans and if the athletes have to play in the elements anyway, oh well. The remaining part of the top of the stadium still has some brackets and sockets used for the purpose of securing the canopy.
The Civic Center does, however, retain the title of First Retractable-Roof Stadium Built For Purposes Where People Aren't Supposed To Die. So there's that.
...who said the Rogers Centre in Toronto (1989)? Nope.
...Civic Arena in Pittsburgh (1961)? Good guess, and that's the conventional-wisdom answer. But there's one earlier.
Try the Roman Colosseum.
Obviously, there was no rigged-up chunk of stone and bronze hanging over the facility. There was, however, a canopy, known as a valerium, which could be draped over the Colosseum on hot days.
An artist's rendering of what this might have looked like:
Yes, there's a hole in the middle, but that really always has been the European definition of a 'roof' as far as stadiums are concerned: cover the fans and if the athletes have to play in the elements anyway, oh well. The remaining part of the top of the stadium still has some brackets and sockets used for the purpose of securing the canopy.
The Civic Center does, however, retain the title of First Retractable-Roof Stadium Built For Purposes Where People Aren't Supposed To Die. So there's that.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Trevor The Tortoise And Qwop The Quail
In the 2001 World Athletics Championships in Edmonton, Trevor Misipeka attended as a representative of American Samoa, intending to compete in the shotput. He would be competing largely so that American Samoa could have someone participating, a common practice in large multinational competitions. No fun shutting out entire nations from the festivities. Bring in a guy, let the nation's flag fly with everyone else's, and we'll just all gloss over the inevitable crash-and-burn in the first round.
This was to be the case with Misipeka; however, eligibility rules had recently been changed without Misipeka's or American Samoa's knowledge. Athletes of this type could no longer compete in field events- such as the shot put. Only track.
Misipeka, who doubled in football as a 300-pound defensive tackle, proceeded to sign up for the 100 meter dash on two day's notice.
Here's the thing about Samoan athletes and defensive tackles: they're kind of big. Shot put suits them. Running, not so much. Misipeka, on two days notice, ran a 14.28, last in the 8-man heat and over three seconds behind 7th-place Philam Garcia of Guam, and was quickly dubbed 'Trevor the Tortoise'.
In the new online game QWOP, you play what is clearly a man inspired by Trevor's example and who also has had all his bones replaced with Jello. You control calves and thighs individually, and you'll quickly wish you didn't.
This was to be the case with Misipeka; however, eligibility rules had recently been changed without Misipeka's or American Samoa's knowledge. Athletes of this type could no longer compete in field events- such as the shot put. Only track.
Misipeka, who doubled in football as a 300-pound defensive tackle, proceeded to sign up for the 100 meter dash on two day's notice.
Here's the thing about Samoan athletes and defensive tackles: they're kind of big. Shot put suits them. Running, not so much. Misipeka, on two days notice, ran a 14.28, last in the 8-man heat and over three seconds behind 7th-place Philam Garcia of Guam, and was quickly dubbed 'Trevor the Tortoise'.
In the new online game QWOP, you play what is clearly a man inspired by Trevor's example and who also has had all his bones replaced with Jello. You control calves and thighs individually, and you'll quickly wish you didn't.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
2018/2022 World Cups
Congratulations to Russia and Qatar.
Russia, I'm sure you'll be a fine host. Summer in Russia's fine; you've put a lot of work lately into your soccer product. You're not as good as you were as the Soviet Union, but that's to be expected; some of the former Soviets are now playing as members of other countries, most notably Ukraine.
Qatar, though, is a bit perplexing, having beaten the United States straight-up 14-8 in the finals of the 2022 vote.
The heat in Qatar- it's the Middle East, in case you haven't heard- and the size of Qatar- smaller than Connecticut, the detractors appear fond of saying- are being brought up most often. The surrounding neighborhood is also a concern of many. I'm not terribly worried there; though 2022 is over a decade away and anything could happen, as things stand, the safer parts of the Middle East don't really tend to get hit. They're where all the money is, and if you're engaging in illicit behavior that requires money, that's probably where you get a lot of that money. You don't want to go mess that up.
What I'm worried about is the team itself.
Remember, a host nation is granted an automatic bid- the only automatic bid- into the Cup. We have just given the Qatari national team a spot in the 2022 World Cup.
Unless they qualify for 2014 or 2018, it will be their first. Qatar has never qualified for the World Cup.
Let's go over their previous attempts, beginning in 1978:
ARGENTINA 1978: Were placed into a first-round qualifying group with Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE. The UAE withdrew. Qatar came in last of the remainder, winning 1 and losing 3. Kuwait, who advanced, came in 3rd out of 5 in the second and final qualifying round.
SPAIN 1982: Qatar was placed in a 5-team group in the first round alongside Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Syria. They came in third with 2 wins, 2 losses. Saudi Arabia, who advanced, finished last in the final qualifying group.
MEXICO 1986: Placed in a 4-team group with Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon. Lebanon withdrew; Qatar came in second to Iraq, who despite playing their home games on neutral ground due to the Iran-Iraq War, wound up going to the World Cup. They came in last in Group B alongside Mexico, Paraguay and Belgium.
ITALY 1990: Qatar advanced out of their opening qualifying group for the first time, beating out Iraq, Jordan and Oman. There were two spots in the Cup on offer from a six-team group; Qatar came in third, one point short. South Korea and the UAE qualified; China, Saudi Arabia and North Korea rounded out the group. Losing 2-0 to last-place North Korea was probably what did Qatar in.
UNITED STATES 1994: Qatar came in second in their 5-team first round qualifier; North Korea would come in first, clinching two matchdays early. Then the North Koreans brought up the rear again in the final qualifying group.
FRANCE 1998: Qatar drew luckily in their first round qualifier, cruising past Sri Lanka, India and the Philippines. They came in fourth in their second-round group, losing 1-0 to group winner Saudi Arabia on the last day, who qualified right there as a result. Had Qatar won that game instead, they would have gone through. Second-place Iran went to a playoff with Japan, lost, went to another playoff with Australia, and qualified on the away goals rule.
KOREA/JAPAN 2002: The frist qualifier was another formality, blowing by Palestine, Malaysia and Hong Kong. The second round, though, was another elimination, as Qatar came in 4th out of 5. China qualified automatically in a rout; the UAE went on to be eliminated by Iran in the playoff.
GERMANY 2006: The first round was comprised of twelve weenie teams, of which Qatar was not one, so they entered in the second round. They lost their luck at the first hurdle, drawing against Iran, who would move on and eventually qualify. Jordan also finished in front of them, but hey: they beat Laos.
SOUTH AFRICA 2010: Everybody was drawn into an opening knockout round aside from the top five teams as per the FIFA Ranking; these were Australia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Iran. (Please note that there were 4.5 spots available to Asia for this Cup.) Qatar was ranked 16th. They drew Sri Lanka, ranked 30th, and blew by them 6-0 over two legs. The second round saw a four-team group with Australia, China and Iraq. Australia and Qatar both moved on, and were placed into the third round. The ten teams left were split into two groups; in each, two would qualify and the two third-placed teams would play off to see who would go up against the Oceania winner. Qatar came in fourth in their group over right games, four points adrift of the money and nine adrift of automatic qualification, behind Australia, Japan and Bahrain.
In the Asian continental cup, the Asian Cup, Qatar has consistently qualified, but has only once advanced past the first round, that happening in Lebanon 2000. And that really only happened because there were three transfer spots in a four-team group and Uzbekistan was the fourth. Uzbekistan drew one and lost two; guess who they drew against. China then dispatched Qatar 3-1 in the quarterfinals, Qatar's goal only coming after China had done their damage. Their all-time record in the Asian Cup: 4 wins, 11 draws, 10 losses.
And then there's the Gulf Cup of Nations, open only to eight teams in the Middle East. There have been 20 of these; Qatar has won two, both as hosts in 1992 and 2004. This cup has a group stage, and in two of the last three, Qatar has failed to get out of it. The club teams aren't so great either; here's how they've done in continental competition. The last and only win by a Qatari club was Al Sadd in 1988-89; that was prior to the major growth of soccer in Asia.
And they're going to host the World Cup now. We're going to put that in the World Cup, folks.
Russia, I'm sure you'll be a fine host. Summer in Russia's fine; you've put a lot of work lately into your soccer product. You're not as good as you were as the Soviet Union, but that's to be expected; some of the former Soviets are now playing as members of other countries, most notably Ukraine.
Qatar, though, is a bit perplexing, having beaten the United States straight-up 14-8 in the finals of the 2022 vote.
The heat in Qatar- it's the Middle East, in case you haven't heard- and the size of Qatar- smaller than Connecticut, the detractors appear fond of saying- are being brought up most often. The surrounding neighborhood is also a concern of many. I'm not terribly worried there; though 2022 is over a decade away and anything could happen, as things stand, the safer parts of the Middle East don't really tend to get hit. They're where all the money is, and if you're engaging in illicit behavior that requires money, that's probably where you get a lot of that money. You don't want to go mess that up.
What I'm worried about is the team itself.
Remember, a host nation is granted an automatic bid- the only automatic bid- into the Cup. We have just given the Qatari national team a spot in the 2022 World Cup.
Unless they qualify for 2014 or 2018, it will be their first. Qatar has never qualified for the World Cup.
Let's go over their previous attempts, beginning in 1978:
ARGENTINA 1978: Were placed into a first-round qualifying group with Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE. The UAE withdrew. Qatar came in last of the remainder, winning 1 and losing 3. Kuwait, who advanced, came in 3rd out of 5 in the second and final qualifying round.
SPAIN 1982: Qatar was placed in a 5-team group in the first round alongside Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Syria. They came in third with 2 wins, 2 losses. Saudi Arabia, who advanced, finished last in the final qualifying group.
MEXICO 1986: Placed in a 4-team group with Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon. Lebanon withdrew; Qatar came in second to Iraq, who despite playing their home games on neutral ground due to the Iran-Iraq War, wound up going to the World Cup. They came in last in Group B alongside Mexico, Paraguay and Belgium.
ITALY 1990: Qatar advanced out of their opening qualifying group for the first time, beating out Iraq, Jordan and Oman. There were two spots in the Cup on offer from a six-team group; Qatar came in third, one point short. South Korea and the UAE qualified; China, Saudi Arabia and North Korea rounded out the group. Losing 2-0 to last-place North Korea was probably what did Qatar in.
UNITED STATES 1994: Qatar came in second in their 5-team first round qualifier; North Korea would come in first, clinching two matchdays early. Then the North Koreans brought up the rear again in the final qualifying group.
FRANCE 1998: Qatar drew luckily in their first round qualifier, cruising past Sri Lanka, India and the Philippines. They came in fourth in their second-round group, losing 1-0 to group winner Saudi Arabia on the last day, who qualified right there as a result. Had Qatar won that game instead, they would have gone through. Second-place Iran went to a playoff with Japan, lost, went to another playoff with Australia, and qualified on the away goals rule.
KOREA/JAPAN 2002: The frist qualifier was another formality, blowing by Palestine, Malaysia and Hong Kong. The second round, though, was another elimination, as Qatar came in 4th out of 5. China qualified automatically in a rout; the UAE went on to be eliminated by Iran in the playoff.
GERMANY 2006: The first round was comprised of twelve weenie teams, of which Qatar was not one, so they entered in the second round. They lost their luck at the first hurdle, drawing against Iran, who would move on and eventually qualify. Jordan also finished in front of them, but hey: they beat Laos.
SOUTH AFRICA 2010: Everybody was drawn into an opening knockout round aside from the top five teams as per the FIFA Ranking; these were Australia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Iran. (Please note that there were 4.5 spots available to Asia for this Cup.) Qatar was ranked 16th. They drew Sri Lanka, ranked 30th, and blew by them 6-0 over two legs. The second round saw a four-team group with Australia, China and Iraq. Australia and Qatar both moved on, and were placed into the third round. The ten teams left were split into two groups; in each, two would qualify and the two third-placed teams would play off to see who would go up against the Oceania winner. Qatar came in fourth in their group over right games, four points adrift of the money and nine adrift of automatic qualification, behind Australia, Japan and Bahrain.
In the Asian continental cup, the Asian Cup, Qatar has consistently qualified, but has only once advanced past the first round, that happening in Lebanon 2000. And that really only happened because there were three transfer spots in a four-team group and Uzbekistan was the fourth. Uzbekistan drew one and lost two; guess who they drew against. China then dispatched Qatar 3-1 in the quarterfinals, Qatar's goal only coming after China had done their damage. Their all-time record in the Asian Cup: 4 wins, 11 draws, 10 losses.
And then there's the Gulf Cup of Nations, open only to eight teams in the Middle East. There have been 20 of these; Qatar has won two, both as hosts in 1992 and 2004. This cup has a group stage, and in two of the last three, Qatar has failed to get out of it. The club teams aren't so great either; here's how they've done in continental competition. The last and only win by a Qatari club was Al Sadd in 1988-89; that was prior to the major growth of soccer in Asia.
And they're going to host the World Cup now. We're going to put that in the World Cup, folks.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
All Hail The Chinese Strongmen
The BBC aside, state-run media's usually not all that great a source. It often tends to be a little heavy-handed towards glorifying the state and the party that runs it. CCTV of China is no exception.
And you will see examples of that in the piece provided today, but if you can get past that, here's ten minutes on how weightlifters get those big heavy things over their heads. It is, after all, an Olympic sport, with plenty of medals up for grabs, and China knows a thing or two about those.
And you will see examples of that in the piece provided today, but if you can get past that, here's ten minutes on how weightlifters get those big heavy things over their heads. It is, after all, an Olympic sport, with plenty of medals up for grabs, and China knows a thing or two about those.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The Tonawanda Kardex
In the modern-day NFL, it's easy to forget the league's roots; the years prior to the first Super Bowl are rarely brought up beyond vague references to leather helmets. It's often easy to forget any sports league's roots, in fact; the days before the league stabilized, expanded, and built the palatial stadiums they currently call home. It's easy to forget the sport's humble beginnings, when teams popped up anywhere that would have them, when games were played in less-than-ideal facilities more likely than not built for something else, when it was uncertain which teams would live and which teams would die, but it was certain that if the league wasn't careful, EVERY team would die. It often makes for some of the most fascinating stories any sport has to offer, as one can sit watching highly-trained athletes with highly specialized skills decked out in state-of-the-art equipment and marvel at how, many years ago, these same athletes would have been semi-random guys with day jobs trying to make do with whatever was handy that day.
I imagine part of the reason I take an interest in it is because, at least in the NFL's case, I'm in the catchment area of the last true callback to that era of the NFL, the Green Bay Packers- the last blue-collar, small-factory-town team. Other teams from that era exist, but the callback sputters out somehow for all but the Packers. The Chicago Bears are no longer the Decatur Staleys. The Detroit Lions are no longer the Portsmouth Spartans. The New York Giants are still the New York Giants, but... they're the New York Giants, not the Poughkeepsie Giants or the Utica Giants or the Syracuse Giants.
Most of the other teams from that era have simply died off. The graves of teams such as the Hammond Pros, Oorang Indians and Rock Island Independents go unmarked and unvisited, even teams that won titles such as the Providence Steam Roller and the Pottsville Maroons (whose title was later taken away and given to what are now the Arizona Cardinals, a transgression that Pottsville curses the owning Bidwell family for to this day). And even among these gravestones, there is one that is less loved than any other, seen only as a curiosity: the Tonawanda Kardex.
The official record will show the Kardex, otherwise known as the Lumbermen, as having lost one game in 1921, a road game, by the score of 45-0, and then folding. This is officially the shortest tenure in NFL history. In reality, it's a little more complicated than that.
Tonawanda, a suburb of Buffalo, first saw the All-Tonawanda All-Stars in 1916, playing semi-pro ball at a high school field. Coached by Walter "Tam" Rose, the All-Stars played in the the New York Pro Football League, which would later merge with a like-minded league in Ohio to create the NFL. The All-Stars-slash-Lumbermen would win that league in their second season, 1917, defeating the Rochester Jeffersons in the final. 1919 brought a trip to the semifinals.
In 1920, New York and Ohio joined forces to create the American Professional Football League, which would later be renamed the NFL. The Lumbermen were not part of the inaugural class, but would play a mixture of teams that were and teams that weren't. They went 7-1, including a 14-3 win over the Jeffersons on Thanksgiving (which, by the way, was the first year of the NFL Thanksgiving tradition.)
In 1921, however, the league worked to keep league teams from playing non-league teams. Tonawanda decided to take the plunge- it only cost $50 to join.
There were, however, two changes made. They were renamed the Tonawanda Kardex, after sponsor Rand Kardex, an company that six years later would become Remington Rand, the company that created UNIVAC. The other change was that the Kardex would be a traveling team. If they were going pro, the Kardex needed money, and Tonawanda, New York was not the place to go look for money. They wouldn't be the only such team; the Buffalo News reported at the time that there would be "eight or ten such teams to do the touring to the big cities where the dough lies."
First, though, was a tuneup against the Syracuse Pros, who were themselves in what would be their only pro season, and who Tonawanda had previously done well against. Syracuse would have won the game, but a last-second touchdown reception was pulled back on a holding call. The game ended a scoreless tie, contributing to Syracuse's professional lifetime record of 0-2-1, but not counted in Tonawanda's record. Next was supposed to be a game against the amateur Rochester Scalpers, but the game was cancelled. Instead, the Kardex would begin their professional career against the Rochester Jeffersons, who they knew they could take.
They couldn't. The Jeffersons crushed them 45-0, the worst defeat the Kardex had ever suffered. No further details on the game are available.
The writing was on the wall. The Kardex were not up to professional standards and they knew it, folding with only the one game on their record. The Professional Football Researchers Association shows they couldn't find any more opponents to play, but that was probably fine by them. The next season, the franchise fee rose from $50 to $1,000, but the PFRA figured the Kardex "wouldn't have operated had the guarantee been 10 cents."
Buffalo had another team in that era, but it was so haphazard and chaotic that Wikipedia is left calling it "Buffalo (1920s NFL teams)". And with this team and the Kardex, Buffalo's illustrious life of professional football was underway.
I imagine part of the reason I take an interest in it is because, at least in the NFL's case, I'm in the catchment area of the last true callback to that era of the NFL, the Green Bay Packers- the last blue-collar, small-factory-town team. Other teams from that era exist, but the callback sputters out somehow for all but the Packers. The Chicago Bears are no longer the Decatur Staleys. The Detroit Lions are no longer the Portsmouth Spartans. The New York Giants are still the New York Giants, but... they're the New York Giants, not the Poughkeepsie Giants or the Utica Giants or the Syracuse Giants.
Most of the other teams from that era have simply died off. The graves of teams such as the Hammond Pros, Oorang Indians and Rock Island Independents go unmarked and unvisited, even teams that won titles such as the Providence Steam Roller and the Pottsville Maroons (whose title was later taken away and given to what are now the Arizona Cardinals, a transgression that Pottsville curses the owning Bidwell family for to this day). And even among these gravestones, there is one that is less loved than any other, seen only as a curiosity: the Tonawanda Kardex.
The official record will show the Kardex, otherwise known as the Lumbermen, as having lost one game in 1921, a road game, by the score of 45-0, and then folding. This is officially the shortest tenure in NFL history. In reality, it's a little more complicated than that.
Tonawanda, a suburb of Buffalo, first saw the All-Tonawanda All-Stars in 1916, playing semi-pro ball at a high school field. Coached by Walter "Tam" Rose, the All-Stars played in the the New York Pro Football League, which would later merge with a like-minded league in Ohio to create the NFL. The All-Stars-slash-Lumbermen would win that league in their second season, 1917, defeating the Rochester Jeffersons in the final. 1919 brought a trip to the semifinals.
In 1920, New York and Ohio joined forces to create the American Professional Football League, which would later be renamed the NFL. The Lumbermen were not part of the inaugural class, but would play a mixture of teams that were and teams that weren't. They went 7-1, including a 14-3 win over the Jeffersons on Thanksgiving (which, by the way, was the first year of the NFL Thanksgiving tradition.)
In 1921, however, the league worked to keep league teams from playing non-league teams. Tonawanda decided to take the plunge- it only cost $50 to join.
There were, however, two changes made. They were renamed the Tonawanda Kardex, after sponsor Rand Kardex, an company that six years later would become Remington Rand, the company that created UNIVAC. The other change was that the Kardex would be a traveling team. If they were going pro, the Kardex needed money, and Tonawanda, New York was not the place to go look for money. They wouldn't be the only such team; the Buffalo News reported at the time that there would be "eight or ten such teams to do the touring to the big cities where the dough lies."
First, though, was a tuneup against the Syracuse Pros, who were themselves in what would be their only pro season, and who Tonawanda had previously done well against. Syracuse would have won the game, but a last-second touchdown reception was pulled back on a holding call. The game ended a scoreless tie, contributing to Syracuse's professional lifetime record of 0-2-1, but not counted in Tonawanda's record. Next was supposed to be a game against the amateur Rochester Scalpers, but the game was cancelled. Instead, the Kardex would begin their professional career against the Rochester Jeffersons, who they knew they could take.
They couldn't. The Jeffersons crushed them 45-0, the worst defeat the Kardex had ever suffered. No further details on the game are available.
The writing was on the wall. The Kardex were not up to professional standards and they knew it, folding with only the one game on their record. The Professional Football Researchers Association shows they couldn't find any more opponents to play, but that was probably fine by them. The next season, the franchise fee rose from $50 to $1,000, but the PFRA figured the Kardex "wouldn't have operated had the guarantee been 10 cents."
Buffalo had another team in that era, but it was so haphazard and chaotic that Wikipedia is left calling it "Buffalo (1920s NFL teams)". And with this team and the Kardex, Buffalo's illustrious life of professional football was underway.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Ducks Rock
Stan Lee and the NHL have entered into a partnership to try to create superheroes based on NHL teams. Each of the 30 teams will get their own superhero.
I am a child of the 90's, and therefore, I have only two words with which to respond to this:
Roll 212.
The team in question is now called simply the Ducks, in an effort to remove themselves from the above identity.
I am a child of the 90's, and therefore, I have only two words with which to respond to this:
Roll 212.
The team in question is now called simply the Ducks, in an effort to remove themselves from the above identity.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Killing The Golden Pigskin
Has there ever been an expansion of a popular sport that fewer people asked for than an expansion of the NFL season to 18 games? Sure. Two more games onto the season. Woot.
On the other hand, you're not actually adding any extra football. You're just removing two preseason games- games that people tend to watch anyway- and replacing them with regular-season games. In the process, the starters- which would either have sat out those two games or played at half-tilt and handed things over to lower-level guys fighting for roster spots- will instead have to play every down at full-tilt. And with attention currently focused as it is on injury avoidance, two extra games added onto their current workload is something their bodies are simply not capable of. And everyone is seemingly willing to go to a work stoppage over it.
David Fleming of ESPN's Page 2 envisions the NFL paying dearly for those two extra games, and sooner rather than later. In the process, he also envisions happy days ahead for the UFL, a league that has been positioning itself explicitly as a minor-league outfit.
That's the UFL, which currently boasts talent such as Josh McCown, Brooks Bollinger, Ahman Green, Anthony Davis, Daunte Culpepper, Maurice Clarett, DeMarcus Faggins, Morton Greenwood, Marcel Shipp, and Tim Rattay. If you'd like a look at it, a game is on tonight at 6 PM Eastern on Versus, and boy, is that TV deal starting to look like the best move Versus ever made.
On the other hand, you're not actually adding any extra football. You're just removing two preseason games- games that people tend to watch anyway- and replacing them with regular-season games. In the process, the starters- which would either have sat out those two games or played at half-tilt and handed things over to lower-level guys fighting for roster spots- will instead have to play every down at full-tilt. And with attention currently focused as it is on injury avoidance, two extra games added onto their current workload is something their bodies are simply not capable of. And everyone is seemingly willing to go to a work stoppage over it.
David Fleming of ESPN's Page 2 envisions the NFL paying dearly for those two extra games, and sooner rather than later. In the process, he also envisions happy days ahead for the UFL, a league that has been positioning itself explicitly as a minor-league outfit.
That's the UFL, which currently boasts talent such as Josh McCown, Brooks Bollinger, Ahman Green, Anthony Davis, Daunte Culpepper, Maurice Clarett, DeMarcus Faggins, Morton Greenwood, Marcel Shipp, and Tim Rattay. If you'd like a look at it, a game is on tonight at 6 PM Eastern on Versus, and boy, is that TV deal starting to look like the best move Versus ever made.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
The Anthropology Of Man-On-Horse
That oughta drive up the hit counter.
When a man races a horse in what is essentially a drag race, the horse is going to win. The human might "win", as Chad Johnson or Ochocinco or whatever did in 2007, but he had a 100-meter head start. As all humans do in these races. Why? Because otherwise the horse is guaranteed to kick their ass.
But that's a drag race.
In 1980, a pub conversation in Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales got around to asking whether a man, over a long enough distance and over twisting, uneven terrain, could take the horse. Cue the Man versus Horse Marathon, a 22-mile race through the hills of Wales. As it turns out, it took 25 attempts, but a human did win the race, Huw Lobb, in 2004. Three years later, a second human, Florian Holzinger, managed it. But normally, the horses have the edge.
Llanwrtyd Wells, by the way, is a haven of insane sports.
But hey, the humans snagged a win or two. What if we made the track even longer? Say, 50 miles over Mingus Mountain in Prescott, Arizona? That's the aim of the Man Against Horse Race, and though the horses are currently on a three-race win streak, the humans are routine victors; the horse's win streak immediately follows an eight-race win streak for the humans.
Why is this? There has to be some sort of reason.
And there is: endurance is what humans were bred for. The ability to sweat- and thus cool down- plus the fact that we run on two legs instead of four sees to this.
Our current state as humans- a state where a 26-mile marathon is a great personal achievement- is really pretty weak for us as a species. Most of us, for all our advances as a species, would get smacked around in a marathon by our hunter-gatherer selves.
Running long distances was a key way for us to eat, and, as you'll see in the upcoming clip, still is for some tribes. Faster prey will get the early jump on us, but Mother Nature doesn't stick a finish line 100 meters away from the start of a chase. Predator and prey run until the predator either gives up or catches the prey. The early lead by the prey doesn't mean the chase is over. As the chase goes on, and the yards and miles pile up, the prey, running frantically to stay ahead, will slowly start to run low on energy, slow, stagger, and finally stop, while the human behind will slowly but steadily keep coming, like a life-or-death Pepe le Pew cartoon. It's called persistence hunting.
In Mexico's Copper Canyons, you'll find one tribe that has pushed this trait to its limit, the Tarahumara Indians (or as they call themselves, the Raramuri, meaning 'foot runner'). Almost any marathoner- or ultramarathoner- that you care to name will pale in comparison to a tribe that can easily rack up mile counts in the triple digits in a single sitting, and consider a 50-80 mile run a daily commute. And they do it while smoking and drinking. A lot. Smoking is part of the training regimen. Drinking is done so often that the linked article estimates that an average Tarahumara spends 100 days out of every year recovering from hangovers.
A horse wouldn't stand a chance.
Nothing coming tomorrow; Labor Day.
When a man races a horse in what is essentially a drag race, the horse is going to win. The human might "win", as Chad Johnson or Ochocinco or whatever did in 2007, but he had a 100-meter head start. As all humans do in these races. Why? Because otherwise the horse is guaranteed to kick their ass.
But that's a drag race.
In 1980, a pub conversation in Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales got around to asking whether a man, over a long enough distance and over twisting, uneven terrain, could take the horse. Cue the Man versus Horse Marathon, a 22-mile race through the hills of Wales. As it turns out, it took 25 attempts, but a human did win the race, Huw Lobb, in 2004. Three years later, a second human, Florian Holzinger, managed it. But normally, the horses have the edge.
Llanwrtyd Wells, by the way, is a haven of insane sports.
But hey, the humans snagged a win or two. What if we made the track even longer? Say, 50 miles over Mingus Mountain in Prescott, Arizona? That's the aim of the Man Against Horse Race, and though the horses are currently on a three-race win streak, the humans are routine victors; the horse's win streak immediately follows an eight-race win streak for the humans.
Why is this? There has to be some sort of reason.
And there is: endurance is what humans were bred for. The ability to sweat- and thus cool down- plus the fact that we run on two legs instead of four sees to this.
Our current state as humans- a state where a 26-mile marathon is a great personal achievement- is really pretty weak for us as a species. Most of us, for all our advances as a species, would get smacked around in a marathon by our hunter-gatherer selves.
Running long distances was a key way for us to eat, and, as you'll see in the upcoming clip, still is for some tribes. Faster prey will get the early jump on us, but Mother Nature doesn't stick a finish line 100 meters away from the start of a chase. Predator and prey run until the predator either gives up or catches the prey. The early lead by the prey doesn't mean the chase is over. As the chase goes on, and the yards and miles pile up, the prey, running frantically to stay ahead, will slowly start to run low on energy, slow, stagger, and finally stop, while the human behind will slowly but steadily keep coming, like a life-or-death Pepe le Pew cartoon. It's called persistence hunting.
In Mexico's Copper Canyons, you'll find one tribe that has pushed this trait to its limit, the Tarahumara Indians (or as they call themselves, the Raramuri, meaning 'foot runner'). Almost any marathoner- or ultramarathoner- that you care to name will pale in comparison to a tribe that can easily rack up mile counts in the triple digits in a single sitting, and consider a 50-80 mile run a daily commute. And they do it while smoking and drinking. A lot. Smoking is part of the training regimen. Drinking is done so often that the linked article estimates that an average Tarahumara spends 100 days out of every year recovering from hangovers.
A horse wouldn't stand a chance.
Nothing coming tomorrow; Labor Day.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Football And Why Its Storytelling Sucks
Football season's on the way, and being a Wisconsinite, it is state law for me to root for the Packers. Football's one of my sports, after all.
But don't expect me to go on about it here like I do with baseball and soccer. That's because as much as I enjoy football, it is terrible at producing the kind of stories I'd want to recount here. We don't have NFL Network in my area, and as far as I'm concerned, it can stay that way.
Why is that? There are a couple reasons.
1: Everyone's face is obscured. That can't be helped. You do have to keep everyone somewhat safe, after all. But when you've got a helmet on, nobody can see who you are. Individualism is gone. You are the name on the back of your jersey, and you are your number. Perhaps you are 'the guy with the dreadlocks coming out of the helmet', but that's really not much to go on. There are no distinctive looks when everyone's got a helmet on, which means no stories about what people go on the field looking like. No afros like half the ABA, no surfer hair like Tim Lincecum, no Snidely Whiplash mustache like Rollie Fingers. Just another guy with the same helmet as everyone else.
2: Highly-choreographed plays. Nobody's got time to be peculiar in any way. Here's your assigned guy, now run away from him/tackle him. That's about it. Run, throw, catch, block, tackle. The most one can do here is make a diffcult catch, or go above and beyond on the tackle, which leads to...
3: Football stories mostly sounding the same anyway. War stories. 'So there I wuz...' After a while, if you're not the war type, they start to blend together in your head. (Unless you decide to go on the speaker circuit, in which case you will tell middle-management types who have spent the last 15 years in a cubicle how what they're doing is exactly like football. These middle-management types deserve every bit of inevitable misdirection they get from a guy that spent a decade repeatedly running headlong into 300-pound college dropouts.)
4: Nobody's running trick plays. Which means no crazy-play stories. They tend to get squashed anyway.
5: The 'No Fun League'. Excessive celebration? 15-yard penalty on the ensuing kickoff. May be good for sportsmanship, but it turns things that much further into a league full of interchangeable dudes who matter to you mainly because of what they did for your fantasy team. Unless you are on defense, in which case you will be stripped of your identity entirely and get lumped in with the rest of your team as one defensive roster spot. A few chosen names may act out- Brett Favre, Chad Ochocinco, Terrell Owens- but mostly names come and go and that's all there is to it. One day revered, the next day forgotten, and even if you're a Hall of Famer, there is every chance a fair number of fans might not recognize you going in even if you played recently. You don't see that happening to baseball or basketball players.
Many of the best stories in football come from the earlier days, when it was a lot looser in operation. You may not want to return to those days of leather helmets and small-town teams that survive three whole seaons before folding and even frequent deaths, but you know the old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."
More recently, the best stories tend to come when some part of the proceedings goes wrong. The "wardrobe malfunction". "South America's Team". A Packers/Panthers game in 2001 being marred by gigantic clumps of sod being torn from the ground throughout the game.
Most likely, teams' seasons will come and go with little to tell the grandkids about except the final record, and maybe a playoff run or even a Super Bowl win, in which case you'll remember the names of some of the players in the years ongoing.
How'd it happen? The same way it happened every other season. Fun to watch, but difficult to remember.
But don't expect me to go on about it here like I do with baseball and soccer. That's because as much as I enjoy football, it is terrible at producing the kind of stories I'd want to recount here. We don't have NFL Network in my area, and as far as I'm concerned, it can stay that way.
Why is that? There are a couple reasons.
1: Everyone's face is obscured. That can't be helped. You do have to keep everyone somewhat safe, after all. But when you've got a helmet on, nobody can see who you are. Individualism is gone. You are the name on the back of your jersey, and you are your number. Perhaps you are 'the guy with the dreadlocks coming out of the helmet', but that's really not much to go on. There are no distinctive looks when everyone's got a helmet on, which means no stories about what people go on the field looking like. No afros like half the ABA, no surfer hair like Tim Lincecum, no Snidely Whiplash mustache like Rollie Fingers. Just another guy with the same helmet as everyone else.
2: Highly-choreographed plays. Nobody's got time to be peculiar in any way. Here's your assigned guy, now run away from him/tackle him. That's about it. Run, throw, catch, block, tackle. The most one can do here is make a diffcult catch, or go above and beyond on the tackle, which leads to...
3: Football stories mostly sounding the same anyway. War stories. 'So there I wuz...' After a while, if you're not the war type, they start to blend together in your head. (Unless you decide to go on the speaker circuit, in which case you will tell middle-management types who have spent the last 15 years in a cubicle how what they're doing is exactly like football. These middle-management types deserve every bit of inevitable misdirection they get from a guy that spent a decade repeatedly running headlong into 300-pound college dropouts.)
4: Nobody's running trick plays. Which means no crazy-play stories. They tend to get squashed anyway.
5: The 'No Fun League'. Excessive celebration? 15-yard penalty on the ensuing kickoff. May be good for sportsmanship, but it turns things that much further into a league full of interchangeable dudes who matter to you mainly because of what they did for your fantasy team. Unless you are on defense, in which case you will be stripped of your identity entirely and get lumped in with the rest of your team as one defensive roster spot. A few chosen names may act out- Brett Favre, Chad Ochocinco, Terrell Owens- but mostly names come and go and that's all there is to it. One day revered, the next day forgotten, and even if you're a Hall of Famer, there is every chance a fair number of fans might not recognize you going in even if you played recently. You don't see that happening to baseball or basketball players.
Many of the best stories in football come from the earlier days, when it was a lot looser in operation. You may not want to return to those days of leather helmets and small-town teams that survive three whole seaons before folding and even frequent deaths, but you know the old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."
More recently, the best stories tend to come when some part of the proceedings goes wrong. The "wardrobe malfunction". "South America's Team". A Packers/Panthers game in 2001 being marred by gigantic clumps of sod being torn from the ground throughout the game.
Most likely, teams' seasons will come and go with little to tell the grandkids about except the final record, and maybe a playoff run or even a Super Bowl win, in which case you'll remember the names of some of the players in the years ongoing.
How'd it happen? The same way it happened every other season. Fun to watch, but difficult to remember.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Basketball Icons You Thought You Loved Until Just Now Not Named Lebron James
The Harlem Globetrotters. Their home address is not Harlem. It is really seriously not Harlem. It's not Washington either. Not even close.
Here it is:
Harlem Globetrotters
400 E. Van Buren #300
Phoenix, AZ 85004
That's right. Arizona.
As for the Washington Generals, they are owned by Red Klotz Sports Enterprises. They are not based in Phoenix, but then, they're not based in Washington either. Their address:
Red Klotz Sports Enterprises
114 S Osborne Ave
Margate City, NJ 08402
Root for the Generals. Yes. They're going to lose. Root for them anyway.
Here it is:
Harlem Globetrotters
400 E. Van Buren #300
Phoenix, AZ 85004
That's right. Arizona.
As for the Washington Generals, they are owned by Red Klotz Sports Enterprises. They are not based in Phoenix, but then, they're not based in Washington either. Their address:
Red Klotz Sports Enterprises
114 S Osborne Ave
Margate City, NJ 08402
Root for the Generals. Yes. They're going to lose. Root for them anyway.
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