A Midsummer Classic Night's Coma
MLB Network has only one real value-showing old baseball films and videos. The past month, it has been broadcasting years and years of packaged All-Star Game highlights during its many hours of non-prime time programming.
Like many fans, I'm almost as happy watching old sports on TV as live action, so I've been checking those films out in my many hours of non-prime time living. Many of the films bring back vivid memories of watching that particular All-Star Game in real time. Many of them, however, do not. And there's a point in the time line of my life where the memories simply drop away. On a graph, it would look like the stock market last October.
When the All-Star films showed games from the 1950s, '60s, and 70s, I splashed in a warm bath of nostalgia. After about the 1979 game (Dave Parker's throw from right field in the Kingdome), my recollections got a little spotty. I recall watching Fred Lynn's grand slam in 1983. There was the game at Wrigley Field in 1990-I watched that at my friend Charles Pierce's house and we laughed at John Kruk refusing to deal with Randy Johnson. I can remember all of the 1999 game at Fenway Park, the tribute to Ted Williams, Pedro's strikeouts, the whole thing. That doesn't count. I was there. I covered it. I'm not so far gone I don't remember events I attended-yet, anyway.
After that judge, it all goes blank. I know the American League has won every All-Star Game this decade except for that stupid tie, but how or why, no. A film of the 2004 Game was as much news to me as a cosmic preview of the 2009 Game would've been.
Summing it all up, the first All-Star Game I was old enough to remember seeing was the 1955 one. I was at my maternal grandparents house in Lansford, Pennsylvania. Stan Musial hit a homer in extra innings to win for the National League. THAT, I remember. The 2008 All-Star game. Under torture and sodium pentothal combined, I could not, this very second, tell you the final score. I must've watched it, the first three innings anyway, but as to what happened in them, there is no clue at this address.
There are two possibilities to explain this phenomenon. One is that I'm getting to that stage in life where the past is more vivid than the present, because it's a more pleasant place for the mind to reside. Readers may feel free to differ, but I don't think so. I remember most other major sports events I've seen on TV since I stopped being a sportswriter. If I can remember the 2006 PGA Championship, or games from the 2006 World Cup, why not the 2006 All-Star Game?
Possibility number two is that I can't remember All-Star Games because I've stopped caring about them in the first place. I think about them less and less during the first half of baseball seasons, and when I do, I generally think about how the All-Star Game pretty much sucks as both competition and entertainment. Then I think about how much I REALLY hate the home run contest the night before, a disgraceful parody of batting practice that like its twin brother the NBA Slam Dunk competition needs to be abolished for the good of sports civilization.
Devout seamheads like to argue that while the other sports' all-star games are terrible because they remove key elements of their sport (hitting in football, defense in hockey and basketball), baseball's unique nature makes its Game a splendid example of the sport at its best. Oh, sure. That's why Bud Selig came up with the World Series home field advantage to the winner dodge. Even Bud realized that as entertainment on its own merits, the All-Star Game couldn't keep the participants awake, let alone the audience.
Here's one sports thought I will attribute to age. The older I get, the more I think the Pro Bowl is the best all-star game of them all, because it's upfront about its pointlessness. Every NFL player thinks it's a great honor to be selected to play. Once honored, they immediately begin thinking of ways to get out of having to actually do so. The Pro Bowl is a sham, but it's a sham with integrity.
The 500-Channel Funeral Universe
Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, and Smokey Robinson were all Motown stars, just like Michael Jackson. Ross had more hits, and Wonder and Robinson were infinitely better musicians due to their amazing songwriting abilities. Smokey even had a higher singing voice than Jackson. As popular musicians, these four are a peer group.
When Ross, Wonder, and Robinson die it'll be big news. I and millions of others will be very sad. They'll probably have lavish funeral services in the best/worst of LA celebrity taste. But I'll bet they won't be at the Staples Center, or broadcast live on 15-20 different cable channels. Nobody at TMZ will get a bonus for video of the open casket, should there be one.
Jackson's death is big news. I am enough of a tabloid child not to say we should think of more important things all the time. The Romans, after all, liked bread AND circuses. But why, exactly, is Jackson's passing such BIG news? Why is he more of a celebrity than his fellow Motowners? Why was poor Jeffrey Toobin sitting on the CNN set in a parking lot under the Southern California sun?
Let's be blunt. Michael Jackson was news because he was a freak. He was, at best, a seriously disturbed person, at worst, a seriously disturbed pedophile. The people who knew and liked him personally (and there were a lot of them), never described Jackson without one thinking "that poor bastard." The kindest emotion Jackson stirred was pity-pity very hard not to mix with contempt.
Americans like freaks. Bite the head of a chicken, you'll draw a crowd, a paying crowd at that. The American Studies major in me thinks this is part of our borderline hysteria as a society that stems from fear and sexual repression. Funny how many words in that sentence refer back to Jackson's personality, isn't it?
Michael Jackson shouldn't creep us out. Our relationship to him damn well should.
Sheed
Two quick forecasts for the 2009-2010 NBA season.
1. Rasheed Wallace will be a valued contributor off the bench for the Celtics and more than justify their investment in him-during the regular season. For the playoffs-no bet.
2. At least twice during the regular season, Wallace will pull rockheaded, hotheaded stunts that will cause Mike Gorman to use his long-suffering, very sad tone of voice he was able to mothball once the Celts got Kevin Garnett.
The Revolution May Be Televised; The Gentleman's Singles Semi-Finals, Not So Much
A random thought while not watchin Andy Roddick and Andy Murray.
The NBC Television Network will not be completely fulfilled and happy as an organization until it can broadcast the Super Bowl on tape delay.
The News Is Too Valuable For the Likes of You
Personally, I have never yet met a newspaper publisher so entrancing that I'd pony up a minimum of 25 grand to have dinner at their house, but some bright people at the Washington Post felt there was a big market for catered pomposity in their town, and they know the territory.
The Post was planning to host a series of intimate supper parties at the home of publisher Katherine Weymouth. Persons interested in health care reform legislation would pay the freight for gatherings of lobbyists, Obama administration officials, Congressional staffers, and oh, yes, Post reporters and editors, in which the topic of health care reform would be discussed in what was advertised as "spirited, but not confrontational" circumstances. And, it need hardly be added, off the record circumstances.
Only in our nation's capital would wonkery be considered a fitting companion for wine. But we assume that public spirited citizens with last names such as Merck and Pfizer were considered the target audience of this unique marketing effort.
The whole thing blew up yesterday when some lobbyist leaked the Post's idea to the Web site Politico. Even for Washington, even for LOBBYISTS, this deal was considered a bit over the top, ethically speaking. Within hours of their discovery by the public, the dinners were canceled.
As a former newspaper person, I'm laughing about this. It beats my alternatives, which are weeping and blind rage. It's a singular revelation, after all. The second-most influential newspaper in the U.S. is run by people who are a) totally corrupt and b) even stupider than they are self-dealing.
An old-fashioned newspaper might seek to uncover and disclose secret meetings between lobbyists and public officials about legislation affecting the lives of its readers. The Post was going to hold them-for cash on the barrel. Its reporters would be at the meetings not to find things out, but to facilitate discussions, presumably by disclosing information they had previously withheld from those readers.
In short, the Post decided that since the news business isn't making any money, it would diversify into the influence business, creating congenial settings for government to function without any of those pesky citizens barging in and spoiling things. A well-informed public may be the bulwark of democracy, but it isn't doing a damn thing for the stock price of Washington Post Co.
Look, anyone who thinks that newspapers haven't always been influenced by their business sides has dinner with the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus every night. Two of the biggest stories of recent history, the way U.S. automobiles went to crap in the '70s and '80s, and the housing bubble, received little coverage relative to their importance, because they made major advertisers unhappy. But there is a difference, however slight, between ignoring news for the sake of money and CREATING news for the sake of money which you then keep secret.
Before further delving into the evil of this idea, let's pause to consider its idiocy. Despite publishing a daily newspaper which runs many stories every edition consisting of anonymous leaks from axe-grinding sources, the management of the Post apparently never considered the possibility that someone would leak THIS story. As my old friend Ted Sarandis might say, Wow!
And of course, the dinner parties were canceled for good within hours after the Politico story hit the Internet. This only demonstrates that the Post KNEW it was up to no good. To their credit, the editors and reporters at the paper were horrified and indignant. Management was merely sad it got caught.
It oughta be. In marketing terms, the Post has urinated on itself. Any subscriber to the paper from now on should read every word in it, including the crossword puzzle, with two thoughts in mind. Who paid for this? How much? That's a terrible shame for the many honest, diligent reporters on the Post staff, especially the ones risking their lives in places like Afghanistan. But they have been compromised by the greed of their superiors.
I will never again work in newspapers. It's just a fact of economics combined with my age. But I still have emotional ties to the business. I don't want my former colleagues to lose their jobs. I believe newspapers serve an important role in society. For democracy to work, people need to know stuff. America is a large place. To find stuff out, you need large news-gathering organizations. In my time, the Herald was hardly a journal of record. It was still a pretty good read for less than a buck. Compare that to the monthly cable-Internet access bill.
But at the same time, I see things as a reader now. And the Post brouhaha is one of an increasing number of stories which shriek that newspapers deserve to die. They are being cannibalized by owners seeking an escape from their own wretched business decisions. They are devolving to the ignoble purpose of providing a forum wherein otherwise anonymous rich people get to shoot their mouths off and meddle in public affairs to benefit their wallets. They are, simply, less worth their modest cost than they used to be.
The old boast was newspapers published "without fear or favor." Nowadays, they publish with almost nothing else.
A Sports Sign of the Climatological End Times
It is July 2. I just turned on ESPN2's coverage of Wimbledon so I could see sunlight. Wimbledon!!!
I imagine by December I'll be tuning into Packers games at Lambeau Field so I can watch fans sweating in Hawaiian shirts.
Thoughts From the American Studies Department
Event subsequent to the untimely (?) death of Michael Jackson remind us that "The Day of the Locust" was a very good book, but only partially fiction.
Six Degrees of Separation From Schaefer Stadium
Count me as extremely skeptical of the chaos theory proposition that Michael Jackson is responsible for Bob Kraft, Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, and three Super Bowl trophies for the New England Patriots. It gives the Sullivan family either far too much or too little credit for their role in the franchise's history, although I'm not sure which.
According to the theory, if Chuck Sullivan hadn't become involved in the promotion of the Jacksons 1984 Victory Tour, and hadn't been taken to the cleaners by Don King in said deal, then the Pats wouldn't have gone bust and the Sullivans wouldn't have been forced to sell to Victor Kiam leading to the franchise's near-collapse, sale to James Orthwein, arrival of Bill Parcells, ascension of Kraft, etc. I disagree. Don't mistake the investment for the investor.
I covered the Pats' financial collapse of the late '80s. That assignment was pretty much why I was hired by the Herald. It was a story that had its moments, such as walking through the floor of the O'Neill Building devoted to U.S. bankruptcy court and seeing not one, but three rooms dedicated to proceedings involving your New England Patriots, or getting the runaround from Donald Trump's office for days on end. (That was when Trump actually was a businessman., not a reality television character businessman. Today, he'd come to my house to discuss a pro football deal).
But I'm wandering. The point of this post is to state that if the Sullivans hadn't taken a total bath on Michael Jackson, they would have done so in some other disastrous deal, a proposed corner in pork bellies, air rights over the Mass Pike. God help us, they might have bought the Herald.
I liked the Sullivans. They were not completely horrible at running a pro football team, either. But the family never had the capital to own an NFL franchise, and their need for said capital meant they were always on the lookout for an opportunity to make a score. Add to that a complete incapacity for high finance, and balance sheet catastrophe was inevitable. The only question was what would be the source of their doom.
That said source turned out to be Michael Jackson merely reflects the real ability of Billy Sullivan and his clan. They had a gift for the bizarre. Speaking as a sportswriter, I bless them for it.
David Ortiz
The great Bill Veeck wrote that he was convinced the most effective cure for a batting slump was "two pieces of cotton, one for each ear."
David Ortiz's June revival indicates the wisdom of Veeck's perception. When Ortiz, the Red Sox, and the world at large were proactive about his astonishing inability to hit during the spring, his performances at the plate went from bad to worse to I-don't-want-to watch-this. Video study, eye exams, moving down in the lineup, taking a few days off, nothing worked.
As soon as the outside world gave up on Ortiz, and he and the Sox stopped talking about the slump, it went away. It might come back (unlikely), but Ortiz is back to being a threat to pitchers instead of to rallies.
Slumps in any sport are like bad colds. You can cram all the chicken soup you want down your gullet, but in the end, there's nothing for it but to suffer until the morning you wake up and the cold has gone away. Willpower has little to do with the viral process.
It doesn't have much to do with eye-hand coordination, either. Ortiz kept swinging until the delicate balance of his batting stroke fell back into place, probably quite by chance. If a batting slump has ever been cured in another fashion, I'd like to hear about it-and so would the curators at Cooperstown.
Know how Terry Francona keeps saying "these things usually resolve themselves" when asked to speculate about decisions he might have to make, or more usually, that the questioner thinks Francona ought to make RIGHT THIS MINUTE? That statement is exhibits 1-10 as to why Francona is one smart manager. You don't build a baseball season. You grow one.
