At virtually any point during my childhood, if you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you I wanted to be a professional baseball player. I was okay as a player…nothing special. I got to pitch in little league, but that was mostly because my father was the coach. I never had any illusions that being paid to play was in my future, but it certainly would have been my choice if all it took was wanting to do it. In this desire, I was certainly not alone. If you watch professional athletes, though, it is clear that it is not all one big party. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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My lead story of the week could be categorized as both Good Sports and Bad Sports. Kyle Busch became the first NASCAR driver to ever sweep all three events at the same track on the same weekend when he won the truck race, the Nationwide race, and the Sprint Cup race at Bristol this week. Busch is a very talented driver, and he put it all together at Bristol, where he has always been strong. The media have grabbed onto this story, extolling the abilities and endurance of Busch and taking the public to task for its constant booing of him. I have a different take on all of that, though. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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I am on vacation this week, and am currently in Sandusky, Ohio, at an amusement park called Cedar Point. It’s a very cool place with a LOT of roller coasters (17, I believe). What it doesn’t have, at least in our hotel, which is called Castaway Bay, is WIFI in the guest rooms. As I am unwilling to subject myself to dial-up, at outrageous rates, mind you, and I am also uninterested in spending much time in this lobby, I will not be providing you with any of my usual brilliant commentary this week. I know, I know…how will you ever make it through your Monday morning without any of my keen insight into the world of sports? You’ll have to muddle through. As I am not a total slacker, I will provide you with some links to some bad sports that happened this week. You’ll need to provide the commentary yourselves. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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Last season, Major League Baseball instituted instant replay, but only for review of homerun calls. On the one hand, if you know anything about baseball umpires, it is an amazing thing that they allowed any amount of questioning of their decision-making to be factored into the game. This is a group that is famous for its arrogance and belligerence. At the same time, it was at least a small measure of progress that a few messed up calls could conceivably be reversed. It seems clear, though, that there is a far greater opportunity for review than just homerun calls. Thursday night’s game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Florida Marlins demonstrated this very well. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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I am often amazed at the regularity with which the world reminds me that many other cultures are not at all like ours. It is easy to believe that those differences make others uncivilized or backward, and much harder to see them as simply different. I am sure there are many people out there who have a greater ability to see the beauty and value in variety than I do. Even those people, though, might have a little bit of trouble understanding what happened with the North Korean national soccer team this week. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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Athletes make loads of money. Most of the rest of us do not. These are basic facts. It is natural to envy what we don’t have, and even to resent those who seem more fortunate than ourselves. Despite this, most sports fans are okay with the fact that many of the athletes for whom we root are millionaires many times over. We take so much enjoyment from sports, we have not only made peace with this inequity, but we often actually support it, advocating that the teams we love spend even more than they already spend. There is an assumed contract with the fans, though, that goes along with the gigantic contracts the players sign. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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Professional baseball players are generally great athletes. Sure, there have been a few major league players that look less than athletic. Fernando Valenzuela, from way back in the Eighties, comes to mind, although he was actually a much better athlete than his appearance suggested. Most of them, though, look the part. They play a difficult game at the highest level, and are generally pretty fit. Sure, injuries are part of the game, as these guys are exerting themselves, running, diving, sliding, throwing, and swinging with great abandon. We expect these players to be supermen. This week, several players proved to be  much less than extraordinary, injuring themselves in a variety of unusual and somewhat comical ways. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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I am a contrarian. I have no problem admitting that. I have often found myself disliking something simply because most people like it. This trait has shown itself most often in my dislike of many major sports stars. If you think back to many of the huge athletes of the past 40 years or so, you will find many on my list of athletes I just don’t like. I am not talking about the trouble-making, law-breaker types. I am talking about the international superstars. From Michael Jordan to Cal Ripken to Mario Lemieux, if most people love the guy, I feel the opposite. Despite that, until very recently, I had nothing against Lebron James. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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I became a football fan at an early age. As much as I like baseball, basketball, and hockey, nothing could ever match the excitement of a football game. College or pro, football has something the other games do not have, even if I could not tell you exactly what that is. One of the things that contributed to my love of football was the quarterback for the Eagles during my teenage and college years. Randall Cunningham could do things no other quarterback could do. He could throw the ball the length of the field, run with incredible speed and agility, and avoid tacklers like no one I had ever seen. He was Michael Vick with a brain and a lack of criminal tendencies and cruelty. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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Something is wrong with the NBA. There was a time when I really enjoyed watching professional basketball. The Sixers last won the NBA championship when I was a teenager, and they have had many bad teams over the years since then, but that didn’t stop me from watching. At some point in time, though, the league lost its way. The best evidence I can give you of this is a trade that occurred on Tuesday between the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder, just before the NBA Draft. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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My columns are often full of bad people. Athletes who break the law are everywhere, it seems. Yet the law-breaking athlete does not always seem to be the lowest form of scum in the eyes of sports fans. Instead, the selfish, prima-donna types are often seen as worse than any others. It defies logic, but I know that I feel that way as well. Consider the case of Albert Haynesworth. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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I will start this column out by stating that I am not much of a soccer fan. I am a sports fan, and I can watch anything competitive, but soccer is not something for which I have any kind of real appreciation. Still, it’s World Cup time, and I would not be doing my job as a sports columnist if I completely ignored this event that is dominating the sports news and likely will for the next month or so. No, I won’t be watching Ghana play Serbia, but I can certainly follow the U.S. team and see if they can make a splash at this level. On Saturday, I sat down to watch the American team play England, a country for whom soccer is a national obsession. Watching this match revealed a number of things to me, and very few of them were positive. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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As much as I love sports, I understand very clearly that professional sports are big business. It feels like I read as many stories about contracts, unions, and endorsements as I do about actual athletic accomplishments. This is more of an observation than it is a complaint, of course. I would not have the incredible access I have to a huge array of sports and sports information right from my couch if there wasn’t an amazing amount of money involved. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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It’s a moment that every baseball player dreams about. Tenth inning, game tied at one, bases loaded, two outs. Hero time, right? Kendry Morales, a young first baseman for the Los Angeles Angels, found himself in this exact situation on Saturday. Morales is a promising player who is in only his second full major league season. He stepped to the plate to face Brandon League, a reliever for the Seattle Mariners. What happened next boggles the mind. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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The sordid story of Floyd Landis took a revealing turn this week. After years of denying the doping allegations that caused him to be stripped of his Tour de France win from 2006, Landis has now admitted having cheated throughout his career. On top of the admission, Landis has taken this opportunity to accuse a number of other riders of the same thing, including seven-time champ Lance Armstrong. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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Back in January of this year, I mentioned a 16-year-old girl named Abby Sunderland who was attempting to make a non-stop sailing trip around the world by herself. Her attempt ended, at least temporarily, about a week ago when she needed to stop for repairs. At the same time, Jessica Watson, a 16-year-old from Australia, was making her own trip. She actually left two months before Sunderland, but had gotten less publicity here in the U.S. She managed to avoid the problems that have plagued Sunderland’s trip, and on Saturday, she pulled into Sydney Harbor after a successful 210 day trip. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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How bad a guy is Lawrence Taylor? Over the years, the former NFL great has done a lot of bad things. Most of his documented problems have involved drugs, particularly cocaine. This time, though, he appears to have hurt someone other than himself. Taylor was arrested last week and charged with third-degree rape and patronizing a prostitute. The victim is a 16-year-old girl who ran away from home at fifteen. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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NFL teams try to be very thorough when checking out players that they are contemplating drafting. A big part of that process involves interviews conducted by members of the front offices, asking the players a variety of questions intended to help the teams determine whether or not to invest a pick and a lot of money in a player’s future. The Miami Dolphins made news last week when Jeff Ireland, the team’s general manager, apologized to Dez Bryant, a Dallas Cowboys draftee, for an inappropriate question he asked Bryant during that pre-draft interview. It seems that Ireland was wondering if Bryant’s mother had ever been a prostitute. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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Injured Cincinnati Reds pitcher Edinson Volquez has been suspended by Major League Baseball for violating the league’s policy on performance enhancing drugs. He claims that the failed test was due to medication he was taking as part of fertility treatments to assist him and his wife with their efforts to start a family. Even if this is true, his actions were incredibly irresponsible. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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It’s not every week that the major sports websites mention vomit right on the front page. We were just that lucky this week, as a baseball “fan” in Philadelphia provided us with such an opportunity. I know the national media was aching for yet another reason to badmouth Philadelphia sports fans. They now have one. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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Have you ever paid to watch a baseball umpire? I didn’t think so. Someone needs to get that message to Joe West, as he has never seemed to understand that during his long career calling baseball games. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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Hey, College Football, it’s me, Alan. I was wondering if you were paying attention to the NCAA Basketball Tournament. If so, I imagine you have noticed that the Butler Bulldogs are in the final. They got there by playing and beating some really good teams. There was no voting to decide who should play in the final. If there had been, there is no way Butler, who ended the season ranked 11th, would be lined up to play Duke for all the marbles. Seems like maybe the basketball people are on to something here. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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The big news in the NFL this week involved the Philadelphia Eagles and Donovan McNabb. The team appears ready to trade its 11-year veteran quarterback and move on with young Kevin Kolb. According to Stephen A. Smith, this is apparently a crime of some sort. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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The Ivy League is known for many things. Most of them have to do with very smart people being very smart. Rarely are the member schools known for their athletic prowess. They don’t even give athletic scholarships. Despite that, the Cornell basketball team spent the weekend proving that sports really do exist in the Ivy League. They have made it to the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Tournament. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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You know what’s amazing? Sometime this week, almost everyone you know will fill out an NCAA Tournament bracket. Male, female, young, old, basketball fan, non-basketball fan, it doesn’t matter. The numbers are staggering. I don’t have the research on this, but I have to imagine that it is the sporting event that pulls in the most non-fans this side of the Super Bowl. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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Sometimes you know there just has to be more to a story. Guy Morriss, who played for the Eagles when I was a kid, is now the head football coach at Texas A&M-Commerce, a Division II school. Recently, a couple of his players were arrested on drug charges. The school paper wrote a cover story about it last week. Early in the morning on the day of publication, some of the players went around campus and took every copy and disposed of them. When asked about the theft, Morriss stated that he was proud of his players. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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The Olympics are over. To me, that is Good Sports at its best. Not the games…the fact that they are over. I’ll admit it. I don’t like the Olympics. There was a time, back when I was in college, that I liked the Winter Olympics, I suppose, but that was a long time ago. I just don’t enjoy the whole thing. I have reported on good and bad sports involving the Olympics over the past few weeks, as the sports world certainly includes these games, and I figure it is my job to talk about them. I just don’t enjoy them. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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I really didn’t want to write about Tiger Woods this week. I dislike everything about this story, and don’t enjoy the thought of piling on to the already massive amount of coverage this story is getting. Still, there is no avoiding it. Clearly, people are fascinated, and to an extent that I find highly distressing. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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I am a big NASCAR fan. Much to my wife’s chagrin, the 2010 season began on Sunday with this year’s running of the Daytona 500. I am always excited for the new season, but my enthusiasm is always tempered by two things: restrictor plates and misplaced hype. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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The Winter Olympics begin in Vancouver on Friday, and I can hear many of you sighing with boredom. Who cares, right? And then there are the cynics amongst us who may believe that a pursuit of excellence is a worthwhile endeavor, but who are disgusted by how the athletes are exploited – they make the sacrifices, but corporations, governments, and the IOC reap the rewards. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports, television
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