Less than two months.
Olympic Mania
Hugh Hewitt writes:
The end of NYC’s Olympic bid is a sorry tale, full of low politics and crass maneuvering. The horse’s rear of the debacle has to be Sheldon Silver, who said of his decisive vote to screw his own city by blocking the construction of the stadium needed to compete for the Games:
“Am I supposed to turn my back on Lower Manhattan as it struggles to recover? For what? A stadium?”
Do fools really believe that such self-serving poses persuade anyone? Sheldon Silver may end his days in the Assembly. He may even do some good things. But he will forever be remembered –if at all– as the dunce who cost New York the Olympics. As the crowd files out of his memorial service, after an hour or so of faint praise, even his family will turn to each other and say, “Too bad he dropped the ball on the Games.”
I don’t know the story of the Olympics bid and Mr. Silver’s participation, but I do have to ask whether I am the only person on the planet who thinks the last damned thing NY needs is to host the Olympics?
I am not sold on the short-term or long-term economic impact of the Olympics, I am not sold on the amount of money it costs to hold them and the numberr of other projects that would be put on hold to finance the construction for the Olympics, I don’t think NYC needs any more attention. NYC is already a destination, just for being NYC. Is the Olympics really going to help the city’s cachet?
Don’t get me wrong- I love the Olympics. But am I wrong to think that they are more of a burden than they are a benefit to a city like New York, and is it wrong to think that NYC’s priorities should be elsewhere?
Sports Mania
These findings don’t surprise me at all:
– When given three choices to describe how close they feel to their favorite sports team (1- not close, 2-close, but can survive without them, 3- very close), 75% of respondents claimed they had a very close emotional relationship.
– 92% of respondents claimed they are stressed/nervous when watching their favorite sports team play a critical game.
– 75% of respondents claimed they become angry/irritable after their favorite sports team loses a critical game. 63% claim they have been depressed or have cried after their favorite team lost a critical game.
– 21% of respondents claimed they have gotten into a verbal altercation with someone who taunted them after their favorite team lost a critical game.
– 93% of respondents claimed they feel a friendly connection with other fans of their favorite team. Only 21% of respondents claim they are more likely to befriend a person knowing he is found of a team they root for.
I personally think Browns fans suffer from a genetic defect, and have been known to cross the street to avoid someone wearing Browns gear, so as to make sure I am not tempted to say something rude.
A Home Run
This op-ed piece in the NY Times is a home run about who is actually to blame for the steroid scandal:
The obvious villains in this whole mess would seem to be those players who are believed to have taken steroids. Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds have become household names of disrepute, and some baseball fans are suggesting that any home run records they have should also carry an asterisk as simple as it is humiliating:
*Steroid Aided.
But the true villains are baseball’s owners, greedy and feckless throughout the game’s history, and in the case of this latest mess, guilty of cynically jettisoning the game’s subtlety and complexity to turn it into a slugfest circus – home-run madness passed off as baseball. Regardless of who knew what when, steroids helped to advance that master plan.
In comments made in the shadow of the Congressional hearings last March on steroid use in baseball, Mr. Selig insisted that owners did not look the other way during the past 10 years. “It’s easy to look back and rewrite history,” he said. “People can say that we knew, but I’d like to know on what basis. There certainly is no medical evidence. There was no testing.”
It’s a pathetic argument. There was no testing because, well, contrary to other pro sports, there was no testing. The National Football League began testing for steroids in 1987. The National Basketball Association started testing in 1998. But up until 2003, Major League Baseball had no testing.
But the see-no-evil defense just doesn’t wash. It doesn’t wash given the owners’ lack of vigilance when it has come to other substances that have harmed the game – alcohol, cocaine and amphetamines. It doesn’t wash when as far back as 1988, the name of Jose Canseco came up in connection with steroid use on national television before Game 1 of the World Series.
It doesn’t wash given that the longest-running manager in baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals’ Tony La Russa, has recently said that steroids were prevalent in the game in the 1990’s. It doesn’t wash given that any owner, even from the padded plush of his luxury box, could look onto the field and see an increasing number of players in the 1990’s so bloated they’d explode if pricked with a pin. Most telling, it doesn’t wash given the aberrational increase in home runs over the past decade.
Owners can attribute the lack of testing to the admittedly difficult players’ union. Or they can cling to ignorance, the de facto policy they adopted of “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t test.” But far from being unsettled by possible steroid use, because they clearly weren’t, baseball’s kings may instead have privately celebrated performance-enhancing drugs, seeing the bulking up of players as an essential component of their effort to rekindle public enthusiasm for the game that they feared had been lost.
The players who used steroids may have broken laws regarding the use of steroids, but they DID NOT CHEAT. It simply was not against the rules of baseball to use steroids, and that is because the owners needed the long ball to sell tickets. I wish people would shut up about McGwire and Bonds. Bud Selig and his gang of misfits are to blame. They created the situation, they rewarded the behavior (with lucrative contracts), and they refused to set standards and test. They are to blame.
Tough Choices
I dunno:
Friends and family of an Appleton woman convicted of theft can pack away their Cheeseheads for the year.
By shedding the green and gold, Sharon E. Rosenthal will avoid donning an orange jumpsuit.
Rosenthal, 49, made a decision that might make many Green Bay Packers fans shiver after Judge Scott Woldt gave her the choice Friday between donating a year of her family
An Oasis in the Desert
It’s that time again- that brief, fleeting two day period of light in an otherwise dark 6 months.
Yes, of course, I am talking about the NFL draft. It is tomorrow, and I can barely contain my excitement. Who are my beloved Steelers going to take?
Put your predictions/desires below, and don’t forget to tell us who your team is…
Damn
The Mountaineers, one of the most exciting and over-achieving teams in NCAA Tournament history, have just come up short against Louisville in overtime.
I sure as hell am proud of them, and they were classy till the end, letting them run out the clock when it was clear the game was over, rather than fouling cheap and possibly hurting someone from Louisville.