Didn't See That Coming

During a break in the Flyers-Penguins match up on Sunday night, Mellon Arena played Fugazi's "Waiting Room." Hockey and Fugazi, two great tastes that go great together.

Happy May Day

As May Day is all about putting aside competition to march in solidarity with your brothers and sisters, I thought I'd share a story with you that captures that spirit.

From Brian Meehan at the Oregonian

Gary Frederick thought he had seen everything in 40 years at Central Washington University. He'd coached baseball and women's basketball for 11 years, been an assistant on the football team for 17 and athletic director for 18.

Last weekend, he learned he was wrong.

In the top of the second inning as his Wildcats played host to Western Oregon University in Ellensburg, Wash., something happened that spoke to the beauty of athletics. It came in the form of a home run that no one in attendance will forget.

"Never in my life had I seen anything like it," said Frederick, 70, in his 14th season as softball coach.

"It was just unbelievable."

Central entered Saturday's doubleheader one game behind Western Oregon in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference race. At stake was a bid to the NCAA's Division II playoffs. Western won the first game 8-1, extending its winning streak to 10 games. Central desperately needed the second game to keep its postseason hopes alive.

Western Oregon's 5-foot-2-inch right fielder came up to bat with two runners on base in the second inning. Sara Tucholsky's game was off to a rough start. A group of about eight guys sitting behind the right field fence had been heckling her.

"They were giving me a pretty hard time," said Tucholsky, a Forest Grove High School graduate. "They were just being boys, trying to get in my head."

At the plate, Tucholsky concentrated on ignoring the wise guys. She took strike one. And then the senior did something she had never done before -- even in batting practice. The career .153 hitter smashed the next pitch over the center field fence for an apparent three-run home run.

The exuberant former high school point guard sprinted to first. As she reached the bag, she looked up to watch the ball clear the fence and missed first base. Six feet past the bag, she stopped abruptly to return and touch it. But something gave in her right knee; she collapsed on the base path.

"I was in a lot of pain," she told The Oregonian on Tuesday. "Our first-base coach was telling me I had to crawl back to first base. 'I can't touch you,' she said, 'or you'll be out. I can't help you.' "

Tucholsky, to the horror of teammates and spectators, crawled through the dirt and the pain back to first.

Western coach Pam Knox rushed onto the field and talked to the umpires near the pitcher's mound. The umpires said Knox could place a substitute runner at first. Tucholsky would be credited with a single and two RBIs, but her home run would be erased.

"The umpires said a player cannot be assisted by their team around the bases," Knox said. "But it is her only home run in four years. She is going to kill me if we sub and take it away. But at same time I was concerned for her. I didn't know what to do. . . .

"That is when Mallory stepped in."

Mallory Holtman is the greatest softball player in Central Washington history. Normally when the conference's all-time home run leader steps up to the plate, Pam Knox and other conference coaches grimace.

But on senior day, the first baseman volunteered a simple, selfless solution to her opponents' dilemma: What if the Central Washington players carried Tucholsky around the bases?

The umpires said nothing in the rule book precluded help from the opposition. Holtman asked her teammate junior shortstop and honors program student Liz Wallace of Florence, Mont., to lend a hand. The teammates walked over and picked up Tucholsky and resumed the home-run walk, pausing at each base to allow Tucholsky to touch the bag with her uninjured leg.

"We started laughing when we touched second base," Holtman said. "I said, 'I wonder what this must look like to other people.' "

Holtman got her answer when they arrived at home plate. She looked up and saw the entire Western Oregon team in tears.

"My whole team was crying," Tucholsky said. "Everybody in the stands was crying. My coach was crying. It touched a lot of people."

Even the hecklers in right field quieted for a half-inning before resuming their tirade at the outfielder who replaced Tucholsky.

Western Oregon won the game 4-2 and extinguished Central Washington's playoff hopes.

Afterward, Central coach Frederick said he received a clarification from the umpiring supervisor, who said NCAA rules allow a substitute to run for a player who is injured after a home run. The clarification, however, could not diminish he glory of Holtman's and Wallace's gesture. Holtman downplayed her role, which her coach said is typical of the White Salmon, Wash. native.

"In the end, it is not about winning and losing so much," Holtman said. "It was about this girl. She hit it over the fence and was in pain and she deserved a home run. . . .

"This is a huge experience I will take away. We are not going to remember if we won or lost, we are going to remember this kind of stuff that shows the character of our team. It is the best group of girls I've played with. I came up with the idea, but any girl on the team would have done it."

Tucholsky went to the doctor Tuesday. Her knee was still swollen; her trainer suspects she tore her anterior cruciate ligament. She will be in the dugout this weekend when Western Oregon attempts to cement an NCAA berth with games against Seattle and Western Washington.

Tucholsky will graduate this spring as a business major with a minor in health. She plans to continue her studies at Portland State and pursue a career in the health field. But she will never forget the generosity of her opponents in her final collegiate game.

"Those girls did something awesome to help me get my first home run," she said. "It makes you look at athletes in a different way. It is not always all about winning but rather helping someone in a situation like that."

Holtman knows something of knee injuries. On May 8, she is scheduled to have arthroscopic surgery on both knees, which have pained her all season. On June 7, she will graduate with a degree in business. She intends to study sports administration in graduate school at Central Washington.

Holtman believes sports has made her a better person.

She wants to give back.

Mallory Holtman plans to do that by becoming a coach.

Costas

Costas Now did a show on sports and the media, a subject I enjoy. Oy. The last 15 minutes focused on racism. The introductory segment seemed to indicate that we'd be focusing on how a largely white media fails to adequately understand and cover the modern black athlete. Costas decided to make the segment, instead, about how white reporters cannot call out black athletes for being thugs, even though we all know they're thugs, because the reporters will be called racists.

Don't even want to get started on the "bloggers" segment.

Bracketology (Oy Edition)

I just filled out what may be the worst bracket in the history of bracketology. I ended up with all four #1 seeds advancing. Never happened before, but why not this year? I really, really wanted to pick Clemson over Kansas, but all the experts seem to have Kansas winning this thing, plus every freakin' year I underestimate Kansas and get Rock, Chalk, Jayhawked out of whatever pool I am in.

I have a feeling that my only consolation this year will be last year's fluke stellar performance and the fact that I have actually been too busy working (if you count getting drunk on St. Patrick's Day and tonight as work, which I do) to put much effort into it this year.

Pitchers and Catchers

Pitchers and catchers report today, bringing us one step closer to the greatest sports season of them all. In a matter of days we will have the start of the NSACAR season, March Madness, Opening Day, NHL playoffs, and NBA playoffs. You don't have to care for them all, but damn it's a great time. In Eugene, we'll cap it all with the US Track and Field Championships. Good times.

Progressive Eugene

The fine students here at the UO, well the ones in the vaunted "Pit Crew" that attend basketball games anyway, spent the better part of last night's basketball game "taunting" UCLA's center, Kevin Love, with the chants "Love is a faggot" and "Love is a pussy."

Despite my fervent wishes, I don't believe there was any irony intended, this was just the best they could come up with.

I am mollified only be the fact that this was not the most objectionable thing I saw yesterday. Surfing the sphere, I came across this, from Republican operatives.

This is the smallest consolation you can imagine.

Welcome to 1998, Welcome to Canada

So I'm looking to buy a Vancouver Canucks' hockey jersey, as I am wont to do whenever I am watching a hockey match-up on the tv. Which is pretty frequently, actually. Not that I am always thinking I should get a Canucks' jersey, in fact I should get a Red Wing's sweater if any, given that I like them most, but the Canucks' shirt is not bad looking both home and away and I can't help but thinking of them as the "local" team. Plus I'm remembered that the Canucks were having a Boxing Day sale where everything was like 20-50% off.

Now I don't know what you all know about the cost of the hockey jerseys, but fat guyfashion does not come cheap. We're talking 150 clams. More if you want numbers. And who doesn't? I mean if your getting your hockey-fan geek on, you might as well go whole hog and let everyone know that you know your obscure North American sports leagues well enough to have particular favorites. So, a 20-50% savings is a considerable factor.

Anyway, I tool on over to the Canucks' webpage to visit the Canuck Store to see if the sale is still on. Nothing on the page indicated that it was, but I thought it might tell you when you put the item in the cart. You know how they do. I found the jerseys page and clicked on the home jersey. Now I expected to see a page where I could possibly see if the price or maybe sizing and numbering options. What I saw, instead, was this. In other words, nothing.

So I'm clicking around trying to figure out how I go about actually ordering a jersey, when I see this:

To place an order for your official Canucks gear please call us toll-free at 1.877.414.1244 or 604.899.7890 or send us an email for further information.

Of course a (semi-)major North American sports league team wouldn't have a website with an online purchasing option, because it is 1998 and 60 Minutes just did a story on this "online shopping." Could be big, maybe we should look into it.

Go Ducks

It's only a few minutes in and the CBS announcers for the Sun Bowl are already pissing me off.

So far they have referred to the South Florida Bulls as the Bulldogs and now we've been treated to a discussion of how "sneaky" Oregon is being in their play calling. It was suggested that with a whole month to prepare, coaches put in these sneaky plays.

Intelligent football people know that the key to the spread offense is misdirection. It is sneaky by design. In fact, without the sneak, the spread offense doesn't work. This is why it does not work at the pro level, where speed and discipline negate the benefits of misdirection.

Intelligent football people know this.

UPDATE: Intelligent football people who have done their homework know that Oregon always lines up to go for two points on the conversion and the holder makes an on-the-field decision as to whether to go for two or to reposition and kick the extra point. It should surprise only the lazy announcer that Oregon would go for two.

UPDATE: Baby Bash?

From his wikipedia page:

He had planned to play field hockey for the junior college he attended in California during the mid-1990s^[2]. After his first year, however, he began selling crystal meth and dropped out after discovering that he was more likely to make fast money through dealing than the likelihood of becoming a professional basketball player^[2]. Bash eventually tore his ankle several times without surgery, permanently ending the possibility of ever playing basketball at even a semi-professional level.

Baseball Chuckles

This made me llol.

ESPN: He [David Eckstein] has been a shortstop and the Cardinals need a shortstop, and Eckstein may end up returning to St. Louis. But Eckstein could also be, for a big-market contending club, a very interesting buy as a super utility player, because he can play second base, and perhaps even third base, along with some shortstop.

Firejoemorgan.com: David Eckstein playing third base would be amazing. I would love to see that. If Jacoby Ellsbury hit a ball down the line to David Eckstein and Eck had to backhand it and throw from foul territory, by the time the ball landed in the first baseman's glove Ellsbury would be sitting on the bench after his inside-the-park little-league HR and Kevin Youkilis would be at the plate with a count of 2-0.

Fuck You, Too

An item in today's Register Guard informs us that Arizona considers Oregon their "second rival" behind ASU. They desperately want to beat us this week. It seems we ran up the score on them in 2001, putting up 63 points, apparently hurting their feelings. Also, in the past couple of years we've picked off three of their verbal commitments.

Here's why I don't care and fervently hope that we kick Arizona's collective asses on Thursday.

I hate, hate, and tremendously dislike Mike Stoops. Mike Stoops is the head coach of the "Wildcats." Stoops became Arizona's head coach in 2004. He was previously an assistant under his brother, the also-hated Bob Stoops, at Oklahoma. As you may know, Oklahoma is in the Big-12 conference. The Big-12, in my humble opinion, is the most over-rated conference in the history of the world. I hate every Big-12 team on principle. Recently, Nebraska made it to the 2002 championship game after losing to Colorado, denying the Ducks a shot at the title. We demolished the Big-12 champion Colorado, proving that the conference was way over-rated and that the Ducks should have been in the title game. I'd also like to point out the over-rating of the Big 12 could result in the Ducks being jobbed out of the title game this year as well.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, Mike Stoops. So he comes out of the Big-12 and immediately starts talking smack about the Pac-10 and how we're not ready from the smash-mouth Big-12 style and he's going to show us a thing or two and Arizona is going to become Oklahoma-west, etc., etc. In other words, I hated him from the first day.

I hate Mike Stoops because the fucker gave Oklahoma game film and tips before the Ducks played Oklahoma in the 2005 Holiday Bowl. Yeah, his brother is the coach of Oklahoma, but you do not help beat a fellow conferencee in a bowl game. It is not done. Except by douche bags. Which Mike Stoops is one. A douche bag.

I also hate Mike Stoops because EA Sports' NCAA 2005 (made in 2004) programmers also decided that Mike Stoops was the second coming and they made Arizona impossibly hard to beat in the game. This means that every time you play AZ, you have to be ready for the last-30-second-three-touchdown-comeback. Nothing is more frustrating that spending 45 minutes beating a team only to have the game force your running back to fumble twice and lose the game. Fuck you Mike Stoops and your friends at EA Sports.

For the non-Duck lovers in the crowd, feel free to hate Mike Stoops because he was a scab during the '87 football players strike. That he was obviously not good enough to continue to play real pro ball and had to spend years playing Arena football is small comfort.

I also hate Mike Stoops because he has a 16-28 record at Arizona, but has already received a contract extension for next year. It's not so much that he gets to keep his job, despite the obvious fact that he is a failure as a head football coach, it is that every fuking year I have to read some dumb-ass quote from Stoops about how this is the year AZ turns it around. Oh they're going to be tough this year. The offense is coming around. Best defense in the Pac-10 this year. There is a fine line between swagger and arrogance and idiocy. Stoops straddles the line between arrogance and idiocy while thinking that he is swaggering himself all over the place.

I hope we put up the triple digits on 'em. I know that's practically impossible, but that was always my goal when I played Arizona on the computer. If the game didn't randomly decide that my quarterback was going to throw an interception on every pass, I went for 100 just to do something about my impotent fury.

Polite Applause Always Appreciated

You all know that I am a big fan of the letters to the editor. A particular favorite subgenre is the letter to the sports editor that complains of home fans booing the opponent. There is no letter that so sublimely misses the whole freaking point. Today's R-G carries a prime example I thought I'd share. It is so grumpy old man, it almost demands to be printed on faded newsprint. It made me smile, I hope it does the same for you.

Accentuate the positive

Noise! It isn’t the amount. It’s when.

When the Ducks come out of the tunnel, the rush everyone gets is an amazing phenomenon. Players, coaches and fans are uplifted by the roar of the crowd. It’s a very massive upwelling of positive spirits.

By contrast, the negative noise and booing that occurs when the visiting team is trying to run a play? It’s ugly. Check out the faces of the people doing that. Not a pretty sight. Compare it to the look when the Ducks make a great defensive play, a score or a field goal.

And besides, it’s cheating. Anytime a visiting team can’t hear its signals, that’s interference with the field of play. And when some of the Duck players are waving their arms for more noise, that tells me they can’t win on their own talents. It’s like their insecure, scared.

I get a mild rush just recalling the Ducks coming out of the tunnel, our mascot on the Harley. It’s just plain grand! Why not accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative?

Bob Pickard

R-G to Eggheads: We Weren't Kidding the First Time

Two hot paragraphs were included in an editorial that appeared in today's Register Guard. It is an otherwise innocuous article about Oregon law governing diploma-mill degrees. Then, for no reason, here's Apu:

But should coaches be required to hold degrees at all? Of course not, because athletic "departments" are not really parts of universities, at least not at top-level schools. The UO athletic department is an ancillary business that is allowed by our cultural norms to use the university's name and trademarks to operate a large-scale entertainment business. The more private money it gets (thereby freeing other actual and potential funds for academic uses) the better.

That is why someone such as Pat Kilkenny is a good choice to lead such an enterprise. He's an experienced businessman with the ability to attract and manage money. The fact that Kilkenny has no degree is a who-cares. The problem he faces is that he is unaccustomed to operating within the slow, talkative process of academe, in which his actions will be publicly trashed by low-income people he has no choice but to work with. He is accustomed to doing things in private with people in his own economic stratum.

I don't have much more to say, other than "wow." What do you got?

Register Guard to Eggheads: Fuck You

Picture on the front page of the Register Guard:


A University of Oregon athlete soaks in one of the heated pools at the athletic department's expanded medical treatment center at the Casanova Center. Among the features are nutritionist and X-ray stations, multiple pools and flat-screen televisions aplenty.

The article that goes with the picture includes this gem, "The first thing that jumps out to visitors, and this is no surprise because it's an Oregon trademark, is that there are flat-screen TVs everywhere." Yes, this has become quite the trademark here at Oregon. I remember when the UO first offered us a flat-screen in every office. i thought they were joking! The article goes on, "In the expanded space, spread out over 14,580 square feet, a recovering athlete will seemingly never be out of range of a flat-screen tuned to some type of sporting event."

Then we get this column from the R-G's new sports columnist. The shorter version is that you don't really need a college degree to be successful, whether you want to be a sports columnist, multi-millionaire, athletic director, or baseball coach. It is this column we are informed/reminded that the UO waived it's requirement to hold a BA to be the athletic director in order to hire AD Kilkenny. Of course, since we were waiving the requirement about any relevant experience, waiving the degree requirement is no big deal.

Boy the R-G hates the UO.

Michael Vick: Victim

For those of you who, like me, enjoy sublimely ridiculous journalism, dial it on over the the Kansas City Star for a fine example of the genre. Jason Whitlock attempts to put this dog fighting thing in some perspective and put the blame where it firmly belongs: hip-hop culture.

As much as I love dogs — and I really do have an affinity for them — this case primarily repulses me because I believe Vick got involved with breeding vicious pit bulls because rap-music culture made it the cool thing to do.

Does he think Vick, if guilty, should get jail time? No. "Honestly, I don’t wish jail on the people who despise me the most. Incarceration is that dehumanizing." Should Vick be suspended before the season starts? Again, no. "I believe in treating everyone fairly. Suspending Vick would be too prejudicial (legal term, not a race term) and inhibit his ability to receive a fair trial."

So Michael Vick, allegedly, owned a farm and a "business" that raised and trained dogs to attack and kill each other for the entertainment of him, his friends, and his family. Who's to blame? Jason Whitlock names names.

Vick has destroyed his athletic reputation while trying to keep pace with T.I.

N.W.A., the late-1980s rap group, hijacked hip-hop years ago, and calls to return it to something resembling decency and self-respect have fallen on Def Jam ear$.

Allen Iverson and his sneaker/jersey sales hijacked the image of black professional athletes years ago...

And, if you have a scorebook at home, we now know that Russell Simmons is adamantly opposed to the killing and brutalization of dogs, but he is in favor of the glorification of killing black men in music.

There you have it. T.I., NWA, Allen Iverson, and Russell Simmons are the real culprits here.

I know I join Whitlock is sincerely hoping that Vick grows and learns from this and becomes a better person so he can be a leader to his teammates and an example to all of us of a person who can learn from his mistakes and "evolve" away from hip-hop destructiveness.

Empirical Hockey (Updated)

The Sabres were robbed last night. With 13.4 seconds left, they put in the tying goal against NY, only to have it disallowed. I will give the NHL credit, they review every close play at the net and often take a significant amount of time doing it. They try their best to get it right and I havn't heard a single peep about how technology is ruining the game, a la football. Now on this goal, the NHL get sit wrong, but they get it wrong because the NHL doesn't believe in science.

The video below is the best footage I could find of the goal.



Here's the thing. In the NHL, there has to be conclusive video evidence that the entire puck has crossed the line. As almost everyone commenting on the game admitted, given the angle of the camera and the momentum of the puck as the keeper's pad goes over it, it is easy to conclude that the puck went over the line. BUT, you cannot "conclude" that the puck went over the line. There has to be a picture of it going over the line, or you "can't know for sure."

So, the NHL, apparently, lives in a purely empirical world where observation is everything and deduction is nothing. Apparently, we "can't know for sure" because geometry is still pretty suspect and logic stops at the blue line.

UPDATE: Yes, yes, feel free to comment on the hair of the commentator, Ginger can't get enough of it.

Sport Break

Anybody else out there following the hokey playoffs? Apparently, this is not something Americans do, but I can't get enough. Trying to watch the NBA playoffs after hokey is difficult, if not impossible. Basketball seems so slow and it's like football in its seconds of action, long break rhythm.

Having no "home team," I am able to pick a favorite in a series, so I always have a rooting interest. Currently, I'm rooting for the Sabers, Canucks, Red Wings, and the Senators. In fact, I keep being tempted to ask PopTart to pick me up a Buffalo jersey, but I could do it via internets and would open myself up for anti-sport, anti-Buffalo, and anti-guys-wearing-jersey posts.

I also discovered last weekend that hokey is infinitely better on a giant screen tv, as it makes seeing the puck all that much easier.

In other sporting news, did you all catch Tony Stewart's anti-NASCAR tirade? I know you did. The link was just for grins. Now I am not a huge Stewart guy, which is odd because I kind of like his little bad-boy image, he drives the #20 Home Depot Chevy and there's nothing not to love there. Might it be the orange-and-black color scheme? I think it might be that he drives for Joe Gibbs racing and I can't root for anyone associated with that particular football team in Washington. But I digress.

Stewart basically called NASCAR for being full of shit, comparing them to pro wrestling in its match-fixing skills, something that I've marveled at for years. Without going into a lot of detail, NASCAR is owned by one family and they literally make the rules. Sometimes in the middle of a race. Stweart called them on their habit of throwing cation flags just when it would come in handy for certain racers. Let's say the top 5 racers are all low on gas and are going to need to pit before the end of the race. If they pit under green, then they are going to lose position to some scrubs who don't need to pit. Invariably, almost as soon as the announcers make this known, a caution for "debris on the track" will come out, the leaders will pit under yellow, not lose position and not lose the race. Now when I say "invariably," I don't mean, "how come I always hit a red light when I'm late? (irony)" I mean every freakin' time. Stewart called NASCAR on this. He was hauled into a 6 am meeting (why 6 am?) and now has withdrawn all comments and wants to assure us all that NASCAR is on the level, the up and up, and is all square.

Alright, Rangers and Sabers is on. Time to go.

March Madness Post 9

I've been watching the games and I have yet to see a team that the Ducks would not have blown away in the Pac-10 tourney, if that makes sense.

I hate to jinx anything, but...

Steelworkers Organizng Athletes

Awhile back I got a call from an organizer for the Steelworkers asking about how we managed to get graduate students defined as employees and how that might work for "student-athletes." Other than chuckling about Steelworkers getting in on the student-employee game, I didn't think much of it, but the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ran an article on a lawsuit filed by a group affiliated with the Steelworkers.

Backed by the Pittsburgh-based United Steelworkers Union, the coalition wants the NCAA to revise rules governing scholarship athletes, the amateur stars in a lucrative commercial enterprise.

Last year, the CAC filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of 20,000 current and former Division 1-A football and major Division 1 basketball players from 144 schools, including the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State University and West Virginia University.

The suit claims the NCAA violated antitrust laws and seeks increases in scholarships to cover full costs of attendance, elimination of earning caps, better health care coverage and higher death benefits. It contends athletes need $2,500 to $3,000 more per year for incidental expenses, which the NCAA eliminated in 1973 to cut costs.

There seems to be some support for it among academic types:

Ellen Staurowsky, a professor at Ithaca College in New York and an advisory board member of the National Institute for Sports Reform, said those conditions create an unfair labor relationship.

"The demands placed on these athletes are different than for any other students. This has created a whole class of students whose existence on campus hinges on their ability to produce revenue," said Staurowsky, who favors a system that offers need-based aid or guarantees four-year scholarships.

"If that's not going to happen ... I do think that we need to acknowledge the fact that the revenue producers really are campus employees."

And well-known sporting types:

Retired Louisiana State University basketball coach Dale Brown said he's considered "a rogue" for fighting what he perceives as hypocrisy in the NCAA. Brown, whose teams made Final Four appearances in 1981 and 1986, remembers "poverty-stricken" athletes struggling to survive.

"Unscrupulous agents see that and will hit on them. I lost one player ... I know an agent made him go pro because he was advancing the player and his mother money," Brown said.

Two things to think about:
1. Scholarships are not guaranteed for four years, they renew every year. If a player is hurt or the university needs the scholarship, then athletes are s.o.l.

2. At least at the UO, the athlete stipend is the equivalent of a TA salary. So all the quotes about having money for food and housing, but not "taking a girl out on a date" should be taken with a grain of salt. Unless they shouldn't.

And then the question for debate is what the TA position should be on this.

Pac-10 Champs!