I try not to make Bad Sports, Good Sports the jerk-of-the-week column every Monday, but there are too many idiots in sports that make this difficult for me. Writing this column for the past year and a half has made it clear to me that there will never be a shortage of first-class morons on which I can focus. This week, Braylon Edwards is our man. [Read more →]
There is a fine line between cheating and gamesmanship. We expect athletes to do everything they can do to win, and will often excuse our favorites when they do things that might be a little bit against the rules. At the same time, we scream indignantly when someone on an opposing team does the same thing. [Read more →]
I planned to lead with a Good Sports story this week, talking about the fact that football is back. I love football, and the start of football season is very exciting for me. I had plans to wax poetic on the beauty of the game, from the joy of watching a well-executed offense to the exhilaration of the jarring hits and intensity of a strong defense. I planned this even though both my college team (Penn State) and my pro team (the Eagles) were not expected to win this weekend. [Read more →]
I consider myself an honest person. I like to think that I would never accept an award or a trophy for something that I earned in a dishonest fashion. Even so, I think that it would be extremely difficult to be in the position in which 14-yer-old Zach Nash found himself after a recent Junior PGA golf tournament in Wisconsin. [Read more →]
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 →]
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 →]
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 →]
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 →]
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 →]
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 →]
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 →]
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 →]
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 →]
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 →]
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 →]
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 →]
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 →]
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 →]
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 →]
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 →]
