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M: Ack, what are you doing?
J: I’m putting you in a wrestling hold. It’s called a full nelson, I believe.
M: Well, that’s not nice. This is how you treat your wife? How about a hug instead?
J: No, no, I am being nice…it’s a love nelson.
Despite the sentiment, the love nelson remains an illegal hold of endearment in our household.
Ben Saunders points up towards the two craziest people in the world, Francois Bon and Antoine Montant, and their speedflying videos, in which videos they half-ski half-parachute down a rocky mountain. “Undoubtedly the most hardcore thing I’ve seen for a long time.”
NFL TV distribution maps: where in the US certain football games are broadcast…a visual representation of why you’ll almost never see a Vikings game in Maine. (via fakeisthenewreal)
Quote of the day, from a friend who ran the marathon: “I feel like I’m rolling a katamari of happiness and can no longer distinguish its parts.”
Skateboarder Bob Burnquist has built the world’s first permanent Mega Ramp, a structure pioneered by Danny Way, who used one to jump the Great Wall of China on a skateboard.
Sports fans: “It seems to me if you are willing to stick around and watch your team win you should be willing to stick around and watch your team lose.”
Michael Lewis profile of Cowboys coach Bill Parcells. I don’t know if this is a typical situation, but the Cowboys seem like a pretty dysfunctional organization.
A confession: I just spent a little while watching NHL ‘94 highlight videos on YouTube and consider it time well spent. After all, it is one of the greatest video games ever made. I noticed quite a few of the featured goals in this video were what my little cadre of gamers in college referred to as “cheater” goals where you go across the goal and slapshot hard to the far side. We outlawed them because it was a guaranteed goal and made playing a whole lot less fun. The goal I didn’t notice so much of was the “rock the cradle” goal, a beautiful goal and my bread and butter as an NHL ‘94 player. It happens on the break where you dribble the puck very quickly back and forth from left to right and, when it works, juke the goalie completely. The best part is that after much practice, you can do it with even the slowest players in the game against the best goalies.
Update: Some crazy souls have made a multiplayer version of NHL ‘94 that works over the internet. You just login to a server, find an opponent, and away you go. There are even leagues!
As part of a World Series promotion, Taco Bell will give away a free taco to everyone in the United States if someone hits a home run over the left field wall in tonight’s game 3. This is a big offer for a big company so of course their lawyers want to make darn sure that we know precisely what “Taco Bell” means when they say “home run”, “left field”, and “free taco” with an extensive list of terms and conditions. Surely the first legal document containing the phrase “a completely outside the bun idea”, the T&C is a fun read, but my favorite is the first condition that you agree to if you take advantage of the offer:
…to release, Major League Baseball Properties, Inc., Major League Baseball Enterprises, Inc., MLB Advanced Media, L.P., MLB Media Holdings, Inc., MLB Media Holdings, L.P., MLB Online Services, Inc., the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, and the Major League Baseball Clubs, and each of their respective shareholders, employees, parents, directors, officers, affiliates, representatives, agents, successors, and assigns (hereinafter, “MLB Entities”) and Sponsor and their affiliates, subsidiaries, retailers, sales representatives, distributors and franchisees, and each of their officers, directors, employees and agents (“Promotional Parties”), from any and all liability, loss or damage incurred with respect to participation in this contest and/or the awarding, receipt, possession, and/or use or misuse of any Free Taco
Man, I really hope someone hits a left field home run tonight. I’m dying to see some creative misuse of free tacos.
Changes in rules and enforcement for the upcoming NBA season: travelling will be called more, no more full-length leg tights, no extending your arms to gain an advantageous position in the lane before free-throws, and no more wearing rubber bands. It’ll be interesting to see if the travelling calls stick…last year, I’d say an uncalled travelling violation occurred on at least 1 out of every 5 or 6 possessions. (via truehoop)
In addition to the race and class aspect that interests me about the book, The Blind Side is, oh, by the way, also about the sport of football, specifically the left tackle position. In the 1980s, the quarterback became increasingly important in the offensive scheme and rushing linebackers, specifically Lawrence Taylor, became a bigger part of the defensive scheme. This created a problem for the offensive line: protect the valuable & fragile quarterback from the huge, fast likes of Lawrence Taylor, whose Joe Theismann-leg-snapping exploits you’ve seen replayed on a thousand SportsCenters. The solution to this problem was to hire giant-handed men the size of houses who move like ballerinas to protect the blind side of the quarterback. Thus has the left tackle position become the second-highest paid position in the league behind the quarterbacks themselves.
When I read Lewis’ profile of Michael Oher in the New York Times, I had a crazy thought: why not cut to the chase and make the men fit to play the left tackle position into quarterbacks instead? Lewis covers this briefly near the end of the book in relating the story of Jonathan Ogden, left tackle for the Baltimore Ravens:
Now the highest paid player on the field, Ogden was doing his job so well and so effortlessly that he had time to wonder how hard it would be for him to do some of the other less highly paid jobs. At the end of that 2000 season, en route to their Super Bowl victory, the Ravens played in the AFC Championship game. Ogden watched the Ravens’ tight end, Shannon Sharpe, catch a pass and run 96 yards for a touchdown. Ravens center Jeff Mitchell told The Sporting News that as Sharpe raced into the end zone, Ogden had turned to him and said, “I could have made that play. If they had thrown that ball to me, I would have done the same thing.”
Having sized up the star receivers, Ogden looked around and noticed that the quarterbacks he was protecting were…rather ordinary. Here he was, leaving them all the time in the world to throw the ball, and they still weren’t doing it very well. They kept getting fired! Even after they’d won the Super Bowl, the Ravens got rid of their quarterback, Trent Dilfer, and gone looking for a better one. What was wrong with these people? Ogden didn’t go so far as to suggest that he should play quarterback, but he came as close as any lineman ever had to the heretical thought.
Many of the left tackles that Lewis talks about in the book can run faster than most quarterbacks, they can throw the ball just as far or farther (as a high school sophomore, Michael Oher could stand at the fifty-yard line and toss footballs through the goalposts), possess great athletic touch and finesse, have the intellect to run an offense, move better than most QBs, know the offense and defense as well as the QB, are taller than the average QB (and therefore has better field vision over the line), and presumably, at 320-360 pounds, are harder to tackle and intimidate than a normal QB. Sounds like a good idea to me.
If you’re waiting for people to stop assuming that sports fans are a bunch of beer-swilling chuckleheads, you’ll need to wait a little longer. Of the first six paragraphs of a story about Minnesota Twins outfielder Torii Hunter’s recent miscues by ESPN “senior writer” Jim Caple, here are three:
“See? This is where Bob makes his crucial mistake. When he orders the eighth beer. If he cuts himself off at seven, he probably doesn’t even talk to that woman, let alone go home with her.”
“Hank, if you had to do it all over again, would you still say those pants make your wife look fat?”
“That @#&% Johnson. I would have gotten that promotion if he hadn’t accidentally sent those bachelor party photos on an officewide e-mail. What a moron.”
Ah, the social tribulations of the red-blooded American male. He told his wife that her pants made her look fat even though she said it was ok to say so and he actually fell for it! OMG! I think read about that in a joke book in the 80s.
Video of a couple of young kids going all Harlem Globetrotters on the court.
Variety is reporting that the movie rights for Michael Lewis’ The Blind Side have been purchased by Fox. Most of the article is behind a paywall, but here’s the relevant bit:
After interest from multiple buyers, which included New Line and Mandalay, the “Blind Side” deal closed for $200,000 against $1.5 million and also includes $250,000 in deferred compensation. Gil Netter will produce for Fox, which did not confirm the value of the deal.
Norton released the book yesterday, but Hollywood interest was sparked when the New York Times Magazine ran an excerpt in its Sept. 24 issue.
Story, which was titled “The Ballad of Big Mike,” centered on Michael Oher, a poor, undereducated 344-pound African-American teenager in Memphis, whose father was murdered and whose mother was a crack addict. Oher had been shuffled through the public school system, despite his 0.6 grade point average and missing weeks of classes each year. But his tremendous size and quickness attracted the interest of a wealthy white couple who took him in and groomed him both athletically and academically to become one of the top high school football prospects in the country.
I’m hoping against hope that if the movie ever gets made, the interesting class and racial issues the book raises aren’t completely steamrollered out of the story in favor of pure uplifting entertainment. (thx, jen)
David Roth got a job at Topps writing for the backs of baseball cards and finds that it’s pretty much like any other job for a large, soulless corporation. “Baseball cards, it turned out, are not made in a card-cluttered candy land. Rather, they are created by ordinary men and women who are generally unawed by their proximity to a central part of American boyhood.” (thx, patricio)
The Ballad of Big Mike, the most intriguing story of a future NFL left tackle you’re likely to read. The piece is adapted from Michael Lewis’ upcoming book on football, The Blind Side. Lewis previously wrote Moneyball.
Update: Gladwell has read The Blind Side and loved it. “The Blind Side is as insightful and moving a meditation on class inequality in America as I have ever read.”
Marathon runners, remember this name: Gabriel Sherman. Mr. Sherman runs marathons (6!) but doesn’t want you to run in any, believing that you slow johnnys-come-lately to the scene have ruined the marathon:
Among autumn’s sporting rituals there is one tradition that fills me with mounting dread: the return of marathon season. If you’ve been to the gym or attended a cocktail party recently, you know what I mean. Chances are you’ve bumped into a newly devoted runner who’s all too happy to tell you about his heart-rate monitor and split times and the looming, character-building challenge of running 26.2 miles. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a slovenly couch potato who abhors exercise. I’m an avid runner with six marathons under my New Balance trainers. But this growing army of giddy marathon rookies is so irksome that I’m about ready to retire my racing shoes and pick up bridge.
Several people I know have either run a marathon or are training for an upcoming one and, while it may sound trite, the experience has made them better people in a way that the “elevated sense of self-worth” that Mr. Sherman sniffs about in the article doesn’t begin to describe. (What’s more, those that have run a marathon are training smartly to beat their previous time.) Mr. Sherman rightly notes the health problems that running a marathon holds for the ill-prepared, but why exclude from a marathon people who are avid, well-trained runners who happen to be slow? Why should the almighty institution of The Marathon™ be more important than the people running in it? And why doesn’t he want more people to enjoy a sport that he loves? Should we implore Mr. Sherman to stop writing because he’s ruining journalism with his shallow, insubstantial articles? Hell no! Keep writing, Mr. Sherman…we’ll keep reading in the hopes that you’ll one day improve and recognize the importance of, every once in awhile, doing something for which you’re not ideally suited because you *want* to.
Dan Osman climbs mountains really fast; watch him scramble up 400+ feet in 4.5 minutes. Insane.
Update: Osman died in 1999 making some crazy jump. Kids, don’t try this at home. (thx, graham)
For those unlucky enough not to get a slot, running in a marathon can be achieved by buying somone else’s bib or just photocopying a friend’s. Bibs for the upcoming NYC marathon are going for a few hundred dollars on eBay and Craigslist. (via clusterflock)
Ben and Tony are postponing South, their unsupported trek to the South Pole and back again, for a year. I own mile 900 of their journey, so I’m looking forward to it, whenever they go.
John Cobb and Ray Edwards own a Honus Wagner T-206 card — the most valuable sports card in the world — and they’ve tried to sell it a number of times, but no one bites because the card hasn’t been properly authenticated (even though paper and printing experts have said the card seems real). Related: the obsessive Vintage Baseball Card Forum. (thx, david)
Great composite photo of Andre Agassi playing a point against Andrei Pavel in the US Open last night. Looks like Agassi had Pavel running a bit.
Update: Nice appreciation of Agassi with a summary of his career.
Henry Abbott reports on what he’s learned about William Wesley, a behind-the-scenes power player in the business of basketball. “Enter William Wesley. How’s this for a resume? He was right there in Michael Jordan’s ear. The whole time. ‘Wes’ helped pull off one of the great feats of modern legend-making. He held the hand of one of the NBA’s less likable characters — an angry, cussing, yelling, gambling, adrenaline addict with some sort of over-competitive personality disorder — as he became the most successful pitchman in sports history, complete with his own animated children’s movie.”
Video of a guy doing a 720 degree slam dunk. It’s really more of a 540, but still, damn. (thx, armin)
Update: A much better version of the dunk by Taurian Fontenette. (thx, dek)
Think you got teh hops? Here’s a photo of Orlando Magic player Dwight Howard kissing the rim in practice. (via th)
Oh happy day, a new nonfiction article by David Foster Wallace! This one’s on Roger Federer. “Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.” The footnotes appear on a separate page and almost comprise an article of their own. I love reading his writing about tennis. (thx, stephen)
Update: Here’s a short clip of Wallace on NPR talking about Federer. When asked about the similarities between great athletes and great novelists, Wallace suggested that great athletes possess the ability to “empathize without sympathy” with their opponent, something that is useful in fiction writing when putting yourself in the shoes of a character.
Update: This YouTube video shows the Federer/Agassi volley that Wallace describes in the epically long sentence in the second paragraph…look for it starting at 8:10. (thx, marco)
Rethinking Moneyball. Jeff Passan looks at how the Oakland A’s 2002 draft class, immortalized in Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, has done since then. “It is not so much scouts vs. stats anymore as it is finding the right balance between information gleaned by scouts and statistical analyses. That the Moneyball draft has produced three successful big-league players, a pair of busts and two on the fence only adds to its polarizing nature.” Richard Van Zandt did a more extensive analysis back in April.
Another article on the decline of the baseball card industry in the US. “Why does a kid want a baseball card of a player when, with a joystick, he can be that player in a video game?” (thx, peter)
The rules of cricket explained so that even an American can understand them. Another take by Kevin Guilfoile, this one with pies.
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