The lovely and talented artist Chantal Lefebvre has begun a new series of illustrations, and I was fortunate enough to be her first subject. She made me look good, despite my obvious aesthetic disabilities. More here: http://chantallefebvredesign.com/blog/new-collage-series/
The ritual of baseball’s spring training marks the true beginning of the year; a time for reflection, for pause, to consider the errors of years passed, and to be hopeful for a season not yet written. You miss that girl, but maybe it’s time to move on. You regret August, but there’s another coming just after July. You were so close to the postseason, but the postseason never came. For many of us, it’s a way out of the February blahs, from winter’s depression, the sight of crisp untouched diamonds and impossibly high uniform numbers lending promise to possibility. We’re all tied for first. We’re all batting a 1.000. We’re all in love. We have a 21.2 UZR/150.
Wait, what?
In so many ways, technology has improved the manner in which we both enjoy and disseminate sport. HD television brings you as close to being there as imaginable. Scores and injury updates fly across the Twittersphere in moments. Fantasy leagues are assembled with friends around the world, not just around the block. I can watch the Habs on my iPhone, in both official languages, and Punjabi. But the advent of the smartphone and a readily accessible supply of infinite information has ruined the art of the discussion, the joy of the bar argument. We have become overly informed, and nowhere is this more evident than in baseball.
While not a Moneyball guy, I appreciate sabermetrics and I understand its role in the game, both in terms of evaluating talent and discussion amongst fans. We’ve evolved, even as casual fans, beyond batting averages and RBIs. I get that. But the beauty of baseball, its essence and charm, has always been in its never-ending narrative. The stories, the romance, the mystery and exposition of baseball cards. Shoeless Joe Jackson. Wally Pipp. Roberto Clemente. Sidd Finch. Morganna the Kissing Bandit. The game where the defense has the ball, where 1921 and 1981 can be measured in conversation, where there is no halftime, no quarters, no clock, no definitive end. Any given game on any given summer day, could possible go on forever.
My god, the doubleheader.
“It’s a great day for a ball game; let’s play two!”
Torii Hunter is an asshole — a vicious, ignorant, weak, and righteous asshole. If I was a Detroit Tiger, I would find it difficult, as a Christian, to have an asshole like Torii Hunter in my clubhouse. Given my Christian teachings and learning, I would find it uncomfortable to share team meals, shower, or take the field, lest his assholeness infect me. If the Lord had wanted us to be tolerant of assholes, he would have explicitly stated as such in the Bible. But he did not, so I could not in good conscience live and work alongside an asshole.
As I remove my tongue from me cheek, let me clarify my lede: Admittedly I’m not a Christian. Probably. I mean, I get gifts from Santa, and hide chocolate eggs from children, but I spend Sundays watching football and nursing hangovers and once used my Bible to serve pie. But I invoke the word of God as Mr. Hunter did recently in a piece in the LA Times about gay athletes in team sports where he claimed that, as a Christian, he would find it difficult to have a homosexual in his clubhouse:
“For me, as a Christian … I will be uncomfortable because in all my teachings and all my learning, biblically, it’s not right… It will be difficult and uncomfortable.”
Continue reading on The Barnstormer…
In June, I wrote an op-ed piece called “Hockey’s Worst Year” about the sport’s complicity in tragic events like the suicides of three enforcers, the abuse of young players by coaches in positions of power, the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash, concussions, and the downfall of the game itself. Readers flocked to condemn the piece, celebrating the game they loved and failing to believe that the sport could be to blame for deaths, for injuries, for failures, for flaws. NHL fans, especially those in Canada, champion the game to the point of fault. And yet, as a new Cup victor was crowned, and a summer passed, nothing in the sport changed. And over the weekend, as billionaires fought millionaires over percentage points that redefine the trivial, the game, once again, came to a standstill. Eight years after the lost 2004-2005 NHL season, the league locked out its players, and for the foreseeable future there will be no NHL games played, no practices, no Hockey Night in Canada, no Don Cherry. And as fans, fans who so fiercely defend the game, we’re left to ask, why? And the answer is simple.
The NHL hates you.
Not only does the National Hockey League hate you, but it hates itself. It hates the beautiful game, of whose legacy is its caretaker. It hates its players. It cares not about their skill, their speed, their passion, and their soft skulls, their proclivity towards abuses both physical and substance. Most of all, the NHL hates its fans. It’s a disdainful hate, a righteous hate, a smug and conceited hate. The kind of venomous, vitriolic, ruthless, mercenary hate that is born of an abusive, spiteful, alcohol-soaked relationship, when each partner is seven gin and gin and gin and gin and tonics into an evening. Unnerving. Sad. Egotistical. Childish. Selfish. Petulant. Entitled. The NHL hates its fans more than any other sports league, more than any other sport, and as the CBA expired on Saturday and with no new deal soon to come, the NHL proved once again how much it hates its fans, by locking out the players.
The NFL, the NBA, and Major League Baseball, all make concessions in order to appeal to and placate their fanbases. Not always, and not to the detriment of the games, but rather to perpetuate their financial and cultural stability. The NFL avoided a work stoppage, as both management and players knew that the obscene amount of revenues they shared were enough, and the risk of losing fans wasn’t worth missing games for a few million dollars here and there. The NBA also avoided a lengthy work stoppage, and though the sport is not without its own issues, and its own lack of loyalty to fans (see: Supersonics, Seattle) the sport understood that missing a season might be a void from which it could not return. Baseball caters to and serves its fans like no other. The MLB website is a tribute to fandom, the sport still manages to sell reasonably priced tickets to games, there is a healthy mix of parity and tradition, and when it does tweak the game such as this season’s extra Wild Card playoff teams, it is done so with the fan in mind as well as the sport. Because, at the end of the day, the other leagues realize that the fan and the sport are essentially the same animal, an animal that needs to be coddled at times, and scolded at others, but loved and nurtured throughout.
The NHL, conversely, beats its fans and the sport like a red-headed step-child.
As the Spice Girls reminded us why the ‘90s were a wasteland of contrived “music” and The Who belted out CSI theme songs, we bid adieu to the Games of the 30th Olympiad. The Olympic flag was lowered and presented to Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes, who as per tradition waved it four times symbolizing the four years we’ll have to wait to care again about the discus, or the floor exercise, or judo. Most Olympians will go back to training in preparation for Rio. Usain Bolt will eat at Hardee’s until his arteries explode. LeBron James will return to South Beach to bask in the sins of ego and pride. Rosie MacLennan will return to her former role as “who?” Televisions will be turned off midday. Bob Costas will disappear. Brian Williams will stop telling us what time it is.
And what of Canada’s efforts? Eighteen medals: one gold, five silver, twelve brown. Neither a success, nor a disappointment. It was typically Canadian. It was average. It was okay. We were just happy to be there. We got to see London. Now comes the post-mortem, where Olympians, coaches, and faux-patriots will call for more funding for the athletes. And in all likelihood, funding will be increased. But I’m arguing that we go the other way on with inevitability. I argue that we should cease all funding for Olympic athletes. Let me repeat that: Cut all Olympic funding to zero.
Own the Podium (OTP), an ambitious government funded initiative was started in 2005 with a goal of Canadian success at the Vancouver 2012 Winter Olympics. And it was somewhat successful, though today all any of us remember of Vancouver is Jon Montgomery drinking a pitcher of beer in Whistler Village and Sidney Crosby scoring on overtime. The federal government funds OTP to the tune of $70 million annually, and divides those monies between the summer ($34M), winter ($22M) and team ($6M) sports. So if we were just to do some quick and admittedly somewhat flawed poet-math, in the four years leading up to the London Games OTP received approximately $136 million dollars, which means that the taxpayers spent $7,555,555.56 per medal. That’s fucking ridiculous.
