Archive for the ‘Sports’ Category

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Happy anniversary!

Sunday, June 4th, 2023

Today is the 49th anniversary of Ten Cent Beer Night.

If you happen to live in the Cleveland area, Collision Bend Brewery is offering ten cent beers from 2:00 PM to 2:48 PM Cleveland time, with a maximum of two per customer. So you’ve got about two hours to hie yourself over there.

While we look forward to reliving an epic TEN CENT BEER NIGHT, we have all seen how terribly things can go with one too many ten cent beers. Please note, this will not be a bench clearing brawl… there will be no bottle throwing, no chair tossing, and no fists flying. Let’s leave that to the replays on the television. Please drink responsibly and leave your fighting pants at home.

Sadly, I don’t have any fighting pants. Anyone know where I can get some? 5.11 makes good tough pants, maybe those will work. Or some of those fire hose pants from Duluth Trading Company?

I won’t be able to make it for this year’s celebration, anyway. But the thought of going up to Cleveland, visiting relatives, and being there for next year’s 50th anniversary is tempting…the month of June is going to be jam-packed with activities, however, and I’m not sure if that’s something I can afford yet.

Posted in Clothing, Pants, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 23, 2023.

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023

Lawrence emailed an obit for C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel for George Bush and long-time advisor to other presidents. NYT (archived).

Rick Wolff. Interesting guy. He was a radio host on WFAN. Before that, he was the “psychological coach” for the Cleveland Indians: one of the first sports psychologists hired by a major league team.

Even though sports psychology was rare in baseball, Mr. Wolff said on his show last year, Cleveland’s players “took the mental side of the game seriously” and within a few years were a “powerhouse in the American League.”
The idea caught on, he added, and “these days it’s the rare, rare sports team or professional or college organization that doesn’t have at least one sports psychologist on their staff.”

…

As an author, he wrote, among other books, “Secrets of Sports Psychology Revealed: Proven Techniques to Elevate Your Performance” (2018) and “Harvard Boys: A Father and Son’s Adventure Playing Minor League Baseball” (2007), which he wrote with John Wolff.

…

The Detroit Tigers picked Mr. Wolff late in the 1972 amateur draft, and he played in their minor league system in 1973 and 1974 while completing his Harvard bachelor’s degree in psychology.

Rick Hoyt, marathon runner with his father Dick Hoyt. I wrote about the Hoyts when Dick Hoyt passed away in 2021, so I’ll point you back to that obit and to the Rick Reilly essay.

The pair competed nearly every year in the Boston Marathon from 1980 through 2014. In 2013, Dick and Rick Hoyt were honored with a bronze statue near the race’s starting line.
They completed more than 1,100 races together, including marathons, triathlons and duathlons, a combination of biking and running.

Ray Stevenson, actor. IMDB.

“Kill the Irishman” is an interesting movie that I have a sentimental fondness for (because Cleveland) and he was good as Danny Greene. But the movie could have been a lot better than it actually was.

Rolf Harris, “Australian-born, UK-resident presenter, actor and convicted sex offender” (stealing Lawrence‘s blurb). IMDB.

Helmut Berger, actor noted for his work with Luchino Visconti. IMDB. (He was also in “Victory at Entebbe” and “The Godfather Part III”.)

Posted in Movies, Obits, Politics, Radio, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 20, 2023.

Saturday, May 20th, 2023

Jim Brown.

Playing for the Browns from 1957 to 1965 after earning all-American honors at Syracuse University in football and lacrosse, Brown helped take Cleveland to the 1964 National Football League championship.
In any game, he dragged defenders when he wasn’t running over them or flattening them with a stiff arm. He eluded them with his footwork when he wasn’t sweeping around ends and outrunning them. He never missed a game, piercing defensive lines in 118 consecutive regular-season games, though he played one year with a broken toe and another with a sprained wrist.
“All you can do is grab, hold, hang on and wait for help,” Sam Huff, the Hall of Fame middle linebacker for the Giants and the Washington team now known as the Commanders, once told Time magazine.
Brown was voted football’s greatest player of the 20th century by a six-member panel of experts assembled by The Associated Press in 1999. A panel of 85 experts selected by NFL Films in 2010 placed him No. 2 all time behind the wide receiver Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers.
He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971, the Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1984 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1995.

He retired in 1966…

He had appeared in the 1964 western “Rio Conchos” and was involved in the shooting of the World War II film “The Dirty Dozen” in England, with plans to attend the Browns’ training camp afterward. But wet weather delayed completion of the filming. When he notified Art Modell, the Browns’ owner, that he would be reporting late, Modell said he would fine him for every day he missed camp. Affronted by the threat, Brown called a news conference to announce that he was done with pro football.

…

Handsome with a magnificent physique — he was a chiseled 6 feet 2 inches and 230 pounds — Brown appeared in many movies and was sometimes cited as a Black Superman for his cinematic adventures.
“Although the range of emotion Brown displayed onscreen was no wider than a mail slot, he never embarrassed himself, never played to a demeaning stereotype of the comic patsy,” James Wolcott wrote in The New York Review of Books in his review of Dave Zirin’s 2018 biography, “Jim Brown: Last Man Standing.” He called Brown “a rugged chassis for a more self-assertive figure, the Black uberman.”
One of Brown’s best-remembered roles was in “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), in which he played one of 12 convicts assembled by the Army for a near-suicide mission to kill high-ranking German officers at a French chateau in advance of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. He next played a Marine captain in the Cold War thriller “Ice Station Zebra” (1968).

IMDB. He was also a prominent civil rights activist.

Brown led the N.F.L. in rushing in eight of his nine seasons. He also set N.F.L. records for career yardage (12,312), total touchdowns (126), touchdowns by running (106), and average yards rushing per game (104) and per carry (5.22). He ran for more than 1,000 yards seven times when teams played only 12 and then 14 games a season (they now play 17), and at a time when the rule book favored the passing game over running plays. He caught 20 touchdown passes, and he returned kickoffs.

Martin Amis, British novelist.

He is best known for his so-called London trilogy of novels — “Money: A Suicide Note” (1985), “London Fields” (1990) and “The Information” (1995) — which remain, along with his memoir, his most representative and admired work.

…

Mr. Amis’s misanthropic wit made his voice at times reminiscent of that of his father, Kingsley Amis. Kingsley, who died in 1995, was one of the British working- and middle-class novelists of the 1950s known as the Angry Young Men and became famous with the success of his comic masterpiece “Lucky Jim” (1954).
Father and son were close, but they disagreed about much. Kingsley Amis drifted to the right with the rise of Margaret Thatcher; he once publicly referred to his son’s left-leaning political opinions as “howling nonsense.”

…

Mr. Amis’s talent was undeniable: He was the most dazzling stylist in postwar British fiction. So were his swagger and Byronic good looks. He had well-chronicled involvements with some of the most watched young women of his era. He wore, according to media reports, velvet jackets, Cuban-heel boots, bespoke shirts. He stared balefully into paparazzi lenses.
His raucous lunches with friends and fellow writers like Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie, Clive James, James Fenton and Mr. Hitchens were written up in the press and made other writers feel that they were on the outside looking in. He seemed to be having more fun than other people. His detractors considered him less a bad boy than a spoiled brat.

…

In 2002, Mr. Amis published “Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million,” a study of the Stalin regime’s atrocities in the Soviet Union. The title alludes to Stalin’s nickname, Koba. The word “laughter” in the subtitle refers to Mr. Amis’s morally perplexed realization that, while Hitler and the Holocaust are off limits, many consider it appropriate to joke about Stalin and the Soviet Union.

Posted in Books, Movies, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 18, 2023.

Thursday, May 18th, 2023

Superstar” Billy Graham, noted wrestler.

A bodybuilding friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Graham got into pro wrestling in the late 1960s with Stew Hart’s Stampede Wrestling in Calgary and wrestled until 1987 until injuries and health issues pushed him out of the ring.
Graham, who moved into a commentary role, wrestled for AWA, WWWF, NWA and WWF during his career.
He was dubbed “Superstar” during his time in the AWA.
Graham won the WWWF championship from Bruno Samartino in April 1977 and held the belt for nine and a half months — losing the title to Bob Backlund in February 1978.

Ralph Lee, founder of the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and puppeteer.

His menagerie ranged from hand puppets to fantastic figures that towered over the audience and were controlled by multiple puppeteers. One of his most famous puppets ate Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin and others — it was the “land shark” that turned up at unsuspecting women’s doors in a 1975 “Saturday Night Live” sketch and returned several times over the years.

Amy Silverstein, author. When she was 24, she was diagnosed with congestive hear failure and had a transplant. She published a book, Sick Girl, in 2007.

The first heart eventually failed, and she went through a second transplant in 2014. In 2017, she published My Glory Was I Had Such Friends.

She was 59, and died of cancer, which is believed to have been caused by the medications she was taking to prevent organ rejection.

Posted in Books, Sports | Comments Closed

Norts spews.

Wednesday, May 17th, 2023

I’m tagging this under “firings”, even though it isn’t a firing in the normal sense of the word.

There were elections yesterday in various parts of the country.

Voters in Tempe, Arizona had three propositions to vote on. All three were related to a plan to build a brand-new arena (and a related large “entertainment complex”) for the Arizona Coyotes NHL team, which is a complete disaster.

In order for the arena to be built, all three propositions had to pass by a simple majority vote.

All three failed by a pretty large margin.

The Arizona Coyotes submitted their proposal to Tempe in late 2021, which involved building nearly 2,000 apartments, an NHL arena and an entertainment district on 46 acres of land west of Tempe Town Lake. It became one of the biggest and most controversial developments in the city’s history.

The estimated cost of this plan was $2.1 billion. It isn’t clear to me how much of this would have been funded with public money, though Field of Schemes cites “$500 million in tax breaks“.

Right now, the team is playing in a 5,000 seat college arena.

“We are very disappointed Tempe voters did not approve Propositions 301, 302, and 303. As Tempe Mayor Corey Woods said, it was the best sports deal in Arizona history,” said Coyotes President Xavier Gutierrez. “What is next for the franchise will be evaluated by our owners and the National Hockey League over the coming weeks.”

There are persistent rumors that the team is going to move out of Arizona completely: one potential location I’ve seen is, believe it or not, Houston.

(I think I went to a Houston Aeros game in the Summit back in the day, possibly as a Boy Scout thing. Never went to see the other Houston Aeros, though, or the Ice Bats.)

More from the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.

Edited to add: coverage from Reason, which wasn’t up when I posted earlier.

Posted in Firings, Politics, Sports | 2 Comments »

Firing watch.

Tuesday, May 16th, 2023

Doc Rivers, who as far as I can tell is neither a doctor or a river (discuss) out as coach of the Philadelphia 76ers.

He went 154-82 in three regular seasons with the organization but, like predecessor Brett Brown, failed to get the team past the playoffs’ second round.

…

Rivers has been one of the NBA’s most recognizable and successful coaches for more than two decades, being honored as one of the top 15 coaches in league history during its 75th anniversary celebration. He won a championship with the Boston Celtics in 2008, before guiding a once-embarrassing Los Angeles Clippers franchise to six playoff appearances in seven seasons. The former All-Star point guard began his coaching career with the Orlando Magic in 1999-2000, where he was named coach of the year in his first season and took that team to three playoff berths in five seasons.
Yet Rivers has also become known for playoff failures, particularly in close-out games. He is now 17-33 in such situations, and 6-10 in Game 7s, after the Sixers surrendered their 3-2 series lead to Boston.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Sun’s Up!

Sunday, May 14th, 2023

Monty Williams out as head coach of the Phoenix Suns.

In four seasons, Williams posted a 194-115 record in the regular season, 27-19 mark in the playoffs, but had disappointing playoff exits last year and this year.

They lost to the Nuggets in six games this year. They made the finals in 2021, and lost in seven games to Dallas in the semi-finals last year.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 10, 2023.

Wednesday, May 10th, 2023

Joe Kapp, former quarterback for the Vikings.

Kapp tied a single-game National Football League record — one held by several quarterbacks — when he threw seven touchdown passes against the defending league champion, the Baltimore Colts, in September 1969.
He threw 19 touchdown passes during the 1969 regular season, leading the Vikings to the 1970 Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs, the champions of the American Football League, which was in its last season before it merged with the N.F.L. The Vikings, anchored by the Purple People Eaters, a fearsome defensive line with Carl Eller and Jim Marshall at the ends and Alan Page and Gary Larsen at the tackles, were strong favorites, but the Chiefs defeated them, 23-7.

…

Kapp joined the Boston (later New England) Patriots in 1970. The Patriots finished with a 2-12 record, then drafted quarterback Jim Plunkett of Stanford, the Heisman Trophy winner.
Having already been involved in a contract dispute with the Patriots, Kapp refused to sign a standard players contract for the 1971 season and quit the team in July, then filed an antitrust suit against the N.F.L. A jury declined to award him damages, but the case represented an early challenge in the players’ ultimately successful struggle to win free agency rights.

…

Kapp turned to acting after his N.F.L. career ended. He appeared on the TV crime series “Ironside” and had supporting roles in the football-themed movies “The Longest Yard” (1974) and “Semi-Tough” (1977).

IMDB listing.

Denny Crum, former Louisville Cardinals basketball coach.

Nicknamed Cool Hand Luke because of his unflinching sideline demeanor, Crum retired in March 2001 after 30 seasons at Louisville with a record of 675-295 and championships in 1980 and 1986.
A former assistant under the renowned U.C.L.A. coach John Wooden, Crum often wore a red blazer and waved a rolled-up stat sheet like a bandleader’s baton as he directed Louisville to 23 N.C.A.A. tournaments and six Final Fours. He was voted college coach of the year three times.

Lawrence emailed an obit for British actor Terrence Hardiman. Other credits include “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles”, “Midsomer Murders”, and “McLibel!”.

Heather “Dooce” Armstrong, blogger and author.

She was one of the early and influential bloggers, who famously got fired when her employers discovered her blog. (This originated the briefly popular slang term “dooced” for someone who got fired for their online writing.) She evolved into a prominent “mommy blogger”, writing about parenthood, domestic life, and her struggles with mental health, especially post-partum depression.

I used to read her somewhat intermittently, back in the day. I thought she wrote well about mental health issues.

She became sort of a big name in the blogsphere. She had content and sponsorship deals. She even had a short lived deal with HGTV.

By [2009], ads visible to Dooce’s 8.5 million monthly readers made a reported $40,000 for the Armstrongs each month, making it her primary source of income; she began running sponsored content as well…
…Jon joked in 2011 that the traffic from the hate sites had been better for the family business than the birth of their second child two years earlier. By then the revenue from Dooce paid salaries not only to the Armstrongs but an assistant and two full-time babysitters.

She and Jon (her husband) divorced in 2012, and she stopped blogging for a time. When she came back, social media was bigger, and even though she had an Instagram feed, her reach had declined. She also went through an experimental treatment for clinical depression, and a couple of years ago announced she was a recovering alcoholic.

She was 47.

Pete Ashdown, her longtime partner, who found her body in the home, said the cause was suicide.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). You can also dial 988 to reach the Lifeline. If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.

Posted in Books, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Brief loser update.

Wednesday, May 10th, 2023

We are into the baseball season, but not as far in as I would like to be. I sometimes try to post a loser update around the All-Star break.

But I did decide I wanted to throw up a link to this:

“Why the worst MLB teams of 2023 are historically bad“.

There are a lot of stats in the article for you baseball people, but summarizing:

Simply put, it is a real thing and it is very, very unusual in a historical context. We can argue about if it will continue, but for now, this is the reality of the big league competitive landscape: There are some teams playing very badly. There are an usual number of teams playing very badly. And there are an unusually large number of teams playing so badly.

Oakland is currently 8-30, for a winning percentage of .211. That works out to 127 losses this season if trends continue. The 1962 Mets lost 120 games, and the 2003 Tigers lost 119.

Posted in Loser, Sports | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: May 8, 2023.

Monday, May 8th, 2023

Vida Blue.

After losing on opening day to the Washington Senators in 1971, Blue, a lefty, reeled off eight wins in a row. In his first dozen games, he threw five complete-game shutouts. By the summer, he was leading baseball in not just shutouts but also wins, strikeouts, complete games and earned-run average.

…

Opposing hitters spoke mystically of how Blue’s fastballs would disappear or jump over their bats. Reporters speculated about why he carried two dimes in his pocket when he pitched, with some suggesting it was a charm to help him win 20 games. Across the country, attendance at his outings swelled to levels that stadiums had not seen in years. Fans of an opposing team, the Detroit Tigers, chanted outside the clubhouse, “We want Vida!”
The A’s appeared in the playoffs for the first time since 1931, ultimately losing to the Baltimore Orioles in the American League Championship. Blue pulled off the feat of winning, in his first full season, both the Cy Young and the Most Valuable Player Awards (beating out his teammate Sal Bando to become the M.V.P.).

…

After the ’71 season, Blue said he should make $115,000. Finley countered with $50,000 and made the dispute public. Blue held a news conference and declared that he would retire from sports to become a vice president for public relations at a steel company.
Ultimately, Blue and Finley settled on $63,150.

…

Blue went on to cement a reputation as a standout regular season pitcher, recording 20 or more wins in three of his first five seasons. He was a contributor to the A’s subsequent success in the playoffs.

…

In 1983, as a pitcher for the Kansas City Royals, Blue and several of his teammates were questioned as part of a federal cocaine inquiry. He pleaded guilty to possession of the drug, leading to 81 days in prison and a yearlong suspension from baseball.

Newton N. Minow. Some of you may recall that name: he was a former chairman of the FCC who, in 1961, gave a famous speech:

“Stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you, and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off,” Mr. Minow said. “I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.”
The audience sat aghast as he went on:
“You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials — many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom.”
He added, “If you think I exaggerate, try it.”

…

But the networks — still recovering from the payola and quiz show scandals of the 1950s — contended that they were only giving the public what it wanted, and an NBC special about Mr. Minow’s hearings appeared to bear them out. The program attracted only a small audience and was swamped by ratings for the western “Maverick” on ABC and the talking-horse sitcom “Mister Ed” on CBS.

…

Mr. Minow also pushed legislation that opened the era of satellite communications. It fostered the creation, by a consortium of interests, of the Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat), and later the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (Intelsat); both allowed the United States to dominate satellite communications in the 1960s and ’70s, and it ultimately led to greater program diversity.

Bill Saluga. You may not recognize the name, but those of a certain age will recognize his most famous character: Raymond J. Johnson Jr.

Posted in Obits, Politics, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Firings watch.

Friday, May 5th, 2023

Mike Budenholzer out as coach of the Milwaukee Bucks.

Milwaukee went 271-120 (.693) during the regular season with Budenholzer at the helm, the best record in the league across that span. The Bucks finished with the best record in the NBA during three separate seasons (2018-19, 2019-20 and 2022-23), but never made it to the Finals in any of those years. They dropped two playoff series against the Heat — this season and in the Orlando bubble in 2020, both in five games — when they were overwhelming favorites.

They lost to Miami in this year’s playoffs. I get the impression that they consistently did well in the regular season, and were a consistent disappointment in the playoffs. But as you know, Bob, I don’t follow basketball closely, so I could be wrong about this.

Rob Murphy out as assistant GM of the Detroit Pistons for being a sexual harasser.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Roll Wide! Tar Eagle!

Thursday, May 4th, 2023

Brad Bohannon out as baseball coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide.

The reason why is a bit shocking:

“Alabama director of athletics Greg Byrne announced he has initiated the termination process for head baseball coach Brad Bohannon for, among other things, violating the standards, duties, and responsibilities expected of University employees,” the university said in a statement Thursday morning. “Bohannon has been relieved of all duties and Jason Jackson will serve as the interim head coach. There will be no further comment at this time pending an ongoing review.”

What’s specifically going on is that there’s an investigation into “suspicious wagering activity” on Tide games. Three states where betting is legal (Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania) have stopped all betting on Alabama.

ESPN first reported Monday evening that the Ohio Casino Control Commission had suspended betting on Alabama baseball games at the state’s legal sports books after U.S. Integrity, a Las Vegas-based independent monitor, detected suspicious bets on last Friday’s Alabama-LSU game in Baton Rouge.
U.S. Integrity, which monitors gambling data to detect abnormalities and misuse of insider information, sent a warning to all of its clients after Friday’s game. Ronnie Johns, the chairman of the Louisiana Gaming Control Board, told NOLA.com that one of the bets was a parlay involving the Alabama-LSU game, and another was a “large” straight-up bet on the game. Both wagered LSU would win.

Alabama lost to LSU, 8-6.

Alabama sophomore pitcher Luke Holman was scheduled to start Friday’s game, but according to UA’s game recap, reliever Hagan Banks was told “an hour before” first pitch that he would be starting in Holman’s place. Holman was scratched after experiencing back tightness before the game, The Advocate in Baton Rouge reported Friday evening.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

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