QUICK TAKES – August 26- 2004

Casual thoughts I was contemplating while noticing how the letters of Doug Mientkiewicz’s last name wrap almost 180 degrees around his number, and wondering what would happen if an athlete had such a long last name that it made a full circle around his back…· Call my crazy, call me unpatriotic, call me a bad sports fan, but I just don’t find the Olympics the least bit interesting.  I’ve tried… I really have.  I have sat down and actually attempted to watch swimming, track and field (as a former shotputter, I actually enjoy watching those behemoths chuck that thing, but unfortunately you have to sit through the women’s 1500 quarterfinal heats, rather than just push a button and get “Shot Put Finals” to come up on the screen), Greco-Roman wrestling, volleyball, etc.  I have tried to get into the storylines, made every effort to place each face with the appropriate individual story of experiencing tragedy and subsequently overcoming it with earning a spot on the Olympic team.  I have even given the USA men’s basketball team a chance, but since I don’t like the way they play, I have discovered that I am a racist.  (According to Jason Whitlock of ESPN.com Page 2, who wrote on Aug 26  that “the criticism of USA Basketball is borderline racist, is definitely unsophisticated and exposes a lot of super patriots as hypocrites,” but that’s a column for another time.  Maybe I should retroactively become a Lakers fan because I suppose all 1980’s era Celtics fans were racists too, right, Jason?)  I just find myself, at 26 years old, completely bored with the concept of the Olympics.

Maybe it’s the number of under-the-radar sports such as archery, badminton, and the aforementioned Greco-Roman spats that bore me.  (Slightly off topic, if I were from Greece and/or Italy, I would be deeply ashamed if an athlete from my country didn’t make the Greco-Roman finals.  The damn sport is named after them, for crying out loud!  It would be like finding out years later that the Boston Strangler was actually from Albany, or Boston Cream Pie was originally made in Cheyenne.  Just a shameful moment for one’s civic pride.)  Sorry, Michael Phelps, but after the Olympics you’ll be relegated to an obscure legacy of Wheaties boxes and Sports and Entertainment questions on “Trivial Pursuit 2020.”  Congratulations on the eight medals and all, but the entire Games is distracting me from my quest to catch up on “The Family Guy” (probably the most underrated show on TV) and to watch enough On Demand episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” to pass the impossibly random 500+ question quiz that appears on the HBO website.

The Olympics haven’t been the same since the Cold War ended.  The same people who, upon President Ronald Reagan’s passing earlier this year, celebrated his pivotal role in the end of the Cold War, should also remember Reagan as the man who, in bringing down Communism, effectively ended any interesting angle of competition in the Olympics.  The Cold War era games were rich with entertaining subplots involving mustachioed East German female gymnasts and Ivan Drago-esque machines of superbly conditioned “amateurs” that the former Soviet Union rolled off its athletic assembly lines.  When our hockey team beat the Russians in 1980, it was probably the greatest moment in the history of sports.  The closest we have this year to a feel-good story is the Iraqi soccer team making it to the gold medal round, and the controversy of the Iraqi athletes saying that they don’t want President Bush’s support for their team.  Maybe I’m overly nostalgic, but somehow Herb Brooks and Jim Craig were a heck of a lot more interesting than the ungrateful slugs that are finally allowed to kick around the soccer ball without fear of losing and being castrated upon return to Baghdad.  

The trouble with today’s Olympics is that our enemy nations aren’t exactly powerhouses in the realm of athletics.  Somehow the prospect of a U.S.-Iraq matchup in women’s volleyball doesn’t thrill me.  Without 6’8″ Rambo Russians to root against, who are we supposed to root for?  The Angolan basketball team?  The Israeli kitesailing team?  Yawn…………. Click.  The closest thing we have to a genuine rival is the Cuban baseball team, but any possible subplots of Jose Contreras-esque defections or the inevitable shots of a supremely proud Castro beaming in admiration of his diamond warriors while being fanned and fed grapes by scantily-clad female servants went out the window when our own band of imbecile amateur ballplayers didn’t even qualify for the Games.  

The only thing that could save the Olympics is if one of the little rogue terrorist nations developed an athletic factory on the scale of the former Eastern Bloc.  Imagine if North Korea suddenly had a kick-ass basketball team that was considered the best in the world.  They could genetically engineer these 5’6 Asian guys that could jump right out of the building, like the high school team in “The Absent-Minded Professor”, win the gold medal 108-68 over the U.S., and then there would be all sorts of controversy over suspected use of Flubber, illegal farming techniques to feed their athletes (a new Five Year Plan, perhaps?), and the shady recruitment of Phil Jackson to instruct the North Koreans in the art of basketball and Zen.  Maybe throw in a paid-off referee and other controversies, and we have 1972 in Munich all over again.  Perhaps the Americans don’t show up to accept the silver medals and they sit in a locked safe for decades.  

THAT would make the Olympics worthwhile again.  Until then, what time is the Sox game tonight?

· I just found out that USC receiver Mike Williams (quite possibly the 84th prominent American athlete to use some variation of that name) had his appeal for reinstatement to the USC football team denied by the NCAA.  Granted, the NCAA is not historically the most logical organization on the planet: Exhibit A, the BCS system.  However, they really dropped the ball on this one.  Williams should be reinstated and should be allowed to play for the Trojans this year.

In case you missed it, former Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett (I would say he is a miserable speck of human being, but Jason Whitlock would say that would make me a racist, so  I’ll just say that Maurice is an excellent person who is just misunderstood by the mainstream sports fan) challenged the NFL’s long-standing rule requiring that all players in the league be at least three years out of college.  He ended up winning, as the NFL’s policy was determined to be exclusionary and in violation of free labor law.  When this barrier was lifted, Williams (who had just finished a stellar sophomore season at co-national champion USC) declared himself eligible for the draft.  Later, a higher federal court overturned the other court’s decision, ruling that the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement is a fair and legal manner of establishing an organization’s rules of qualifying for employment, no different than a teachers’ union contract requiring all new hires to have earned at least a Bachelor’s degree.  Williams, now ineligible again, applied for reinstatement to the NCAA and began practicing with Pete Carroll’s team, only to find out on Thursday (two days before the Trojans’ season opener with Virginia Tech) that the NCAA had denied his appeal and he would have to sit out this season, presumably twiddling his thumbs and doing extra Analysis homework, awaiting his chance to play in the NFL in 2005.

Who is running the NCAA, the Iraqi Information Minister?  Miles Brand (NCAA President), much like baseball commissioner Bud Selig, could probably ruin a wet tee-shirt contest.  I guess we should expect nothing less from the only organization that could possibly spoil one of my personal favorite sports, college football, by having an arbitrary and pointless postseason system that results in nothing more than massive payouts to the biggest conferences and the pathetic consequence of co-national champions.  They had a gold mine right in front of them: one of the most talented, respected, and marketable players in their game WANTED to return and play college football, and they denied him that right because of arcane eligibility rules that failed to take into account his individual situation.  Two thumbs down to the NCAA for being the biggest band of inflexible, obstinate blowhards this side of Pat Robertson’s core electorate.

· Saw a Red Sox legend last Thursday night in Cambridge at the Oldtime Baseball Game, a charity event organized to raise money for cancer research at Mount Auburn Hospital: Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd, a right-handed Sox pitcher from the 1980’s era who boasts one of the greatest nicknames in the history of sports.  The game, featuring mostly college players, was memorable for the antique uniforms that the players were wearing, ranging from a 1901 Baltimore Orioles (who became the New York Yankees) outfit to the Can’s own vintage replica of a Negro League barnstorming team from the 1940’s, the Ethiopians.  Former Boston College, New York Giants, and Patriots football player Steve DeOssie played first base for the other team and took some hacks at the Can, managing to hit a rope to right field, only to watch the perfectly positioned right fielder catch it easily.

The Can was a perfect fit for this event.  He weighs about 140 pounds soaking wet, and was sporting 4 inch hoop earrings in both his ears.  He exuded electricity and charisma, and everyone in attendance hoped to get to talk to him.  Even at 45 years old, he can still put on a show.  We stood next to his dugout, and while the Can was sitting on the bench in between innings, a fan came up to him with a memento that he had been saving for years: two Fenway Park metal chairs, covered with signatures from dozens of sports luminaries, such as Larry Bird and Mike Eruzione, among many others.  When this fan politely asked Oil Can to add his John Hancock to the seats, the Can replied, “Brother, let me get three up and three down and I’ll come right back and sign your chair.”  What a fabulous response.  Sure enough, the Can (who still throws pretty well for his age) sat down the opposing team, came back to the dugout, and signed the chairs.

Seeing the Can also brought back a memory from the era when the Red Sox trained in Winter Haven, Florida, in the 80’s.  Having been to Winter Haven, I can attest that there is nothing to do there except to wait in your air-conditioned hotel room all day for the 3 PM – 7 PM ten cent drinks Happy Hour at the Red Lobster.  Apparently, the Can decided to fill his time in the Haven by renting hard-core adult movie from a local video store.  After he had run up hundreds of dollars of late fees for the videos, the store publicized the list of what he rented, which the media promptly dubbed, “The Can’s Film Festival.”  Just a great character whom I was surprisingly happy to see pitch again.

· OK, we all need to get over the Nomar trade.  It happened, it was inevitable, it couldn’t have been prevented, he is happier now, the Sox are better now… the fact that people are still calling into WEEI and bitching about Nomar, or Theo trading Nomar, or Larry Lucchino’s “he said/she said” fiasco with the alleged phone call he placed to Nomar, or Nomar allegedly having hurt himself (god forbid) playing SOCCER in the off season… I just can’t take it anymore.  

I still have my Garciaparra jersey, just like I still have an old Bledsoe jersey, and an old Antoine Walker jersey.  (Apparently I am cursed with being given gifts of jerseys of players who are destined to be dealt away from Boston.  I could make a living predicting this; someone gives me a jersey, I bet a bunch of people $1,000 that that player will be dealt away from Boston within a year and a half, said player gets traded in an ugly, controversial deal, I make thousands of dollars.  Based on this year’s jersey acquisitions the following players should watch out: Johnny Damon, Paul Pierce, and Richard Seymour.  The formula never fails.)  

Either way, I am not giving up my Nomar jersey, just like thousands of Pats fans still wear old Bledsoe and Lawyer Milloy jerseys to Gillette Stadium.  Nomar had great years for us, now he’s gone, and the Sox are on a roll.  Get over it.  You can still wear those Nomar shirts to Fenway, and your kids aren’t going to swear off baseball forever or become Cubs fans because he was traded to Chicago.  Roger Clemens was my favorite player growing up, and I’m still a Sox fan.  Carlton Fisk and Fred Lynn broke the hearts of the previous generation of Sox fans, and there wasn’t a mass exodus of the Nation to become White Sox or Angels fans.  All the Nomar sycophants need to get a life and realize that getting Doug Mientkiewicz, Orlando Cabrera, and Dave Roberts was the exact move that Theo had to make.  Wear your jersey, love Nomar, follow his stats with the Cubs, but please shut up about it.

(If you respond by saying that I am not following my own advice by writing about it, then you can shut up, too.)

· Finally, I was busy celebrating my (and my roommate’s) 26th birthday and housewarming last Saturday night and didn’t watch the Patriots get pummeled 31-3 by the Bengals in a televised practice scrimmage, so I can’t comment on it except to say that no one could be happier about the loss than Bill Belichick.  You can tell a team so many times that they can’t just step on a field and win because they are the champs, but now that they actually got their butts kicked by the former Bungles, they can actually remember again what losing and playing a frustrating game feels like.

I like the “get it out of your system” mentality… in practice.  Last year, Michael Gee of the Herald suggested that it would be healthy for the Patriots to lose a game late in the season, to eliminate the “pressure” of the winning streak they were (and still are) on, thus allowing them to concentrate solely on the larger goal of winning the Super Bowl.  I couldn’t imagine a more ridiculous statement.  Such a comment is the kind of thing you would expect to hear from a guy who never played competitive sports in his life.  (I am not saying that Gee never played, but it sounds like something that such a person would say.)  Losing is never good for you, but identifying and correcting mistakes is invaluable.  That’s what preseason games are for, identifying your strengths and weaknesses in personnel and strategy, and fine-tuning them for the season.  If you lose a preseason game, you learn what you have to work on.  If you lose a regular season game it means you didn’t perform well, and you failed when it counted.  

Bottom line, don’t sweat the 31-3 debacle, but if it happens during the regular season, don’t dismiss it, either.  As Bill Parcells is fond of saying, “You are what you are.”  And until the games start counting for real, the Pats are what they are: defending Super Bowl champs.

To next time…