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...

Flying Car!

Ever since the year 2000 hit, you've probably been wondering where the hell is your flying car.

Here it is. The Terrafugia Transition Roadable Aircraft, cleared for highway use on June 30 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In order to get there, they had to give it some exemptions from regulations other cars have to follow- a lighter windshield, aircraft tires, and the FAA had to give it a weight exemption allowing it to fly 110 pounds heavier than other planes in the 'light sport aircraft' category into which it has been placed.

It's not going to be the greatest car in the world. It's only got 100 horsepower. It will only do 65 MPH on the road and 115 MPH in the air. You'll need 1,700 feet of road in order to take off, plus room to fold out the wings, which will take 30 seconds to do. But hey. Flying car. You wanted a flying car, here's a flying car.

If all goes well, it will be available at the end of 2012 and will run you a mere quarter-million dollars.

Meanwhile, Urban Aeronautics out of Israel is trying to develop a flying car of their own, called the AirMule. It's not ready yet- steering and stability are still kinks that have to be ironed out- but not only do they plan to make it fly, they want to add robot arms to it as well. That, however, is going to keep it off the showroom floor; the robot arms are intended for inspection and maintenance- power lines, bridges, things like that. You won't get to have new and amusing ways to cut off some guy in traffic.

And also, they don't intend to make it a manned vehicle. It's to be operated remotely. Which is a total buzzkill.

You can't get too down, though. One flying car is plenty to be giddy over.

Rapid-Fire Book Club, Too Much Information Edition

I think I dropped about a pound of sweat in my car today heading to Milwaukee.

See?

Anyway, two books need an adding, obtained via Boswell Book Company, a nice little place on the north side near Lake Michigan...

Kean, Sam- The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World From the Periodic Table of the Elements
Purdy, Dennis- Kiss 'em Goodbye: An ESPN Treasury of Failed, Forgotten, and Departed Teams

You may recall Kiss 'em Goodbye as a source from my article about the Tonawanda Kardex. Why's it here now? Because at the time of the article, I found the book for the first time via Google Books. And now here it is in the Rapid-Fire Book Club. (So that's one sale Google Books has generated.)

While we're here, congratulations to Pyeongchang, South Korea for being awarded the 2018 Winter Olympics. You best have snow when we all roll into town, though.

Nothing Left To Lose

Have you ever watched one of those police-videos shows? Usually, whatever the person the police are chasing did to have the cops going after them, the smartest thing they can do, at any given moment of the chase, is to pull over and surrender. Their chances of getting away are minimal at best, especially if the chase happens to be one that gets picked up by the local news. The longer they run, the more cops chase them and the more opportunity they have to make things worse for themselves by racking up additional charges.

However, every so often, you'll see a video where the consequences facing the fugitive in question are so severe that it becomes a case where they feel they have nothing left to lose, or at least where the narrator interprets it as such. They have such a sentence facing them that, in a coldly pragmatic sense, for them pulling over would be pointless. These are the ones who tend to face either life or effective life without parole, the death penalty, or in a few rare cases, are destined to die where they stand facing off against the cops. These people tend to yield the most harrowing and spectacular chases of all. The last category- the fugitives destined to go down in a blaze of glory- is almost a first-ballot Hall of Fame of the police-video set: the North Hollywood shootout, the Killdozer, the San Diego tank rampage.

It's troubling, but at the same time, it is a natural human response. When someone feels as though they have nothing to lose, inhibitions, reservations, and anything else holding that person back all fall away. All that is possible becomes a potential course of action, and all thought to be impossible is considered anyway. After all, might as well. The feeling is responsible for some of humanity's most dramatic and heroic moments, but it can also lead to some of its worst.

Over the weekend, one of these moments happened in Columbia, South Carolina. Kenneth Myers was found dead on Saturday after having killed his wife, her twin sister and mother, and his ex-girlfriend before turning the gun on himself. His relationship with the ex-girlfriend slowly deteriorated over seven years, and his marriage was doing the same. The economy was also negatively affecting his business in auto glass repair.

Michael Rushton of the Wagoner Police Department noted of Myers, "At one point in time, whenever he tried to evade us, I saw his face for a brief second, and you could tell he was a different person," Rushton said. "He had gotten to the point where he thought he had nothing else to lose. He figured he was done for, I'm assuming, and I really hate that he had done what he had done."

Which leads us to a bit of a problem. Any effective punishment or treatment, or threat of same, depends on the target believing that things will be measurably better if they cease their undesirable behavior. If that does not exist, they won't stop. And if they reach a point where they are convinced that they're screwed no matter what they do, that allows them to let loose. Instead of one dead body, there are five. Instead of a surrender, there is a shootout.

At the same time, though, to a degree, properly calibrating a punishment so that this feeling is not triggered is outrageously difficult, and may not even be possible. Again, usually a punishment's effectiveness depends at least partly, and sometimes completely, on the offender's perception of it. If the offender doesn't think it's worth restraining themselves over, they won't. And if they think they have nothing to lose-
think being the keyword- well, we've just gone over that.

Whether or not there is even a minorly feasible way to prevent the nothing-to-lose sentiment from taking hold in the mind of a suspect, the failure of one to be identified results in tragedy that need not happen every time it does. The consequences of not having a preventative procedure are such that at least some brainstorming should be devoted towards trying to make one.

Maybe a fix is possible. Maybe it's just one of those things that happens. But whether or not there's an answer to the problem, it's at least worth asking the question.

Four For Fighting

It's the Fourth of July. Independence Day in the United States.

I suppose some of you are expecting me to make some high-minded speech where I once again decry the toxic political discourse in this country. Which, don't get me wrong, is completely unacceptable for a nation that has any right to call itself a moral compass or global authority. You're probably looking at me, on this day, to reach back to the Founding Fathers and talk about what they'd think of us were they to see how we lay into each other on this most patriotic of days.

I can do that for you. But you may not like what you hear.

First, let's cover the revolution itself. The revolution was not a united group of colonists against the British; let's make that clear. Some of the colonists were loyal to the British crown. What's not as cut-and-dried is the exact split of loyalists to patriots, and how many people were undecided, as it were. The long-standing conventional wisdom on the topic was that it was an even three-way split. More recently, though, the split's been refigured more like 15-20% loyalist, 40-45% patriot or patriot-sympathetic, and the rest neutral. A little more in favor of the patriots than before.

And, of course, as things progressed, the patriots pressed their numbers. Much of the war revolved around trying to win the hearts and minds of the undecideds. This was accomplished partially through persuasive argument and, eventually, partially through forcing the loyalists to shut up via lootings, beatings, harassment and various other indignities. After the war, some of the loyalists got out of Dodge. Just like Liberia was "founded" by Americans leaving America, Sierra Leone was "founded" by black loyalists who had fled to Nova Scotia and discovered that life wasn't much fun there either.

Most of the loyalists, however, stayed put. However, they continued to harbor loyalist feelings for the remainder of their days. Sentiments you went to war over die hard, win or lose. In the end, when the first political parties in America were formed, one, the Federalist Party, took a decidedly more pro-British tack. It's not hard to figure out where the loyalists went.

This would come into play over the Fourth of July.

If you happened to be perusing the Daily Beast last year, you'll have noticed Sean Wilentz talk about exactly what the Founding Fathers were up to on Independence Day: sniping at each other. The two parties of the time, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, wouldn't even hold events with each other.

The Democratic-Republicans would spend the day attacking the Federalists over the Sedition Act, which made it illegal to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government or officials within. In practice, the law basically made it illegal to criticize then-President John Adams, especially since the law had an expiration date that just so happened to also be Adams' last day in office.

In turn, the Federalists spent the day attacking Thomas Jefferson and downplaying his role in writing the Declaration of Independence. A few scattered loyalists were still around, and they had huddled with the Federalists. One, Timothy Pickering, called the Declaration "high-wrought Philippic against Great Britain and her King.”

Albert B. Southwick of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette recalls here how things went down in Worcester in 1808. The ill will harbored by each party in that story was repeated nationwide; the book Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic by Len Travers tells about how that same year in Philadelphia, Federalists aimed to "excite hostility even to blood," with both parties threatening each other, each attempting to goad the other into throwing the first punch so they would have an excuse to fight.

So what happened to calm things down on the Fourth? Simple: the Federalists died off as a party. When Jefferson became the third President in the 1800 election, the Federalists found themselves on their back heel. Accustomed to an upper-class lifestyle, they found themselves out of touch. And when Jefferson's handpicked successor, James Madison, was elected to two terms of his own, they found themselves near death. (Opposing the War of 1812 didn't help their case any.) By the time James Monroe came along in 1816, they barely had enough power left to even field a candidate to oppose him. They would informally send twice-defeated vice-presidential candidate Rufus King to oppose Monroe, and when that failed, by 1820, the Federalists were left fielding only a candidate for Vice President, Richard Stockton, without a Presidential candidate for him to run with. It was the last gasp before the party dissolved entirely. And without two parties that could attack each other on the Fourth, and without a party sympathetic to the British, Independence Day became a day of unified patriotism.

The immediate post-Federalist era was known as the Era of Good Feelings. It wasn't entirely good feelings; the issues that would later result in the Civil War were beginning to take root. But for one day a year, at least, it was an improvement.

Random News Generator- Germany

First off, yes, there's the Women's World Cup going on today. Earlier today North Korea lost 1-0 to Sweden, sending the Swedes through to the quarterfinals and eliminating the North Koreans with one game remaining for each in the group stage. The United States plays Colombia shortly; the Americans can advance with a win while a loss will eliminate Colombia.

Also confirmed to advance are France, Japan and host Germany. Confirmed as eliminated are Nigeria, Canada and New Zealand.

However, there is something else notable in Germany today: the formal end of their draft, with the final draftees being released from service on Thursday. West Germany instituted a draft in 1957, with the aim of tying the military more closely to society in general so that it wouldn't get any new bright ideas about world domination. Sometimes the period of required service was 18 months; in later years it was whittled down to six, and eventually, the memory and shame of Hitler and World War 2 just turned the Germans largely off of war entirely. The result has been a shrinking military, fewer campaigns abroad, and the end of the draft that we are now seeing.

Although the recession had something to do with it too.

Swapping to a volunteer force, though, may start causing another cultural echo chamber, as a disproportionally high number of volunteers come from the former East Germany. Lack of opportunity in civilian life leads some to enlist, just like in any other country with a volunteer army, and East Germany never really caught up with West Germany economically after the Cold War.

The move to abolish the draft has drawn opposition from, of all things, the nation's hospitals. With any draft, there will be conscientious objectors. Conscientious objectors are placed somewhere on the homefront where they can still be of use- for instance, a hospital. Or a kindergarten. Or an assisted-living facility. Those places, in turn, receive relatively cheap labor. That is the core of the objection: no objectors means no cheap labor, and no cheap labor means payroll costs go up. In addition, the objectors tend to be given the more basic, menial tasks, tasks that would then have to be reassigned to their regular employees, employees that have gotten used to concentrating on more critical tasks. Productivity, thus, would go down as well.

Jobs, however, would not be much of an issue. Germany is currently riding 24 consecutive months of falling unemployment, with the 7.0% unemployment rate the best Germany has seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall. If someone wants or needs that kind of work, there it is.

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.