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Unfavreable Reviews

Brett Favre's announcement that he is coming back to the Pack has made news, but in a fairly unkind way.  Look at how MSNBC.com chose to headline this news:

The full MSNBC.com article is more positively stated, but I couldn't help feeling a little upset by the headline's negativity: It's news that he is not retiring, suggesting that the expectation would be that he would, in fact should, retire.  Contrast that presentation with my local newspaper's coverage.  There may be, however, some bias in that reporting....

It is certainly true that Favre himself has provided plenty of reasons for thinking that his last game, a glorious victory over Chicago, would be his final game, particularly since he issued the now-requisite, pre-retirement water-works.  But even so, doesn't this 3-time MVP and guaranteed Canton inductee deserve at least the benefit of grammatical doubt?  Can't the press say he "is returning," rather than "not retiring"?  Are Presidents "not defeated" in elections?  Do wedding announcements state that a couple "is no longer single"?  Where's the proactive love?

I am confused by the tone of the negative headline.  In a sporting world where Roger Clemens can drift and out of retirement at will, while holding an average of three baseball franchises hostage to his employment whims, why are some people coming down so hard on ol' Favre?  With his iron-man constitution and even a few decent receivers to assist him, 2007 could the year when Favre sees his name move to the top of many column in the record books.

Perhaps this is the inevitable and graceless public decline that awaits today's sporting legends.  Regardless of their skill, the public cools toward once-great players and loses all patience with signs of their mortality.  A mediocre player can stay in the league for decades without much mention; but a great player can display no mediocrity.  It makes me wonder if we will ever see another prominent athlete given a late-career chance like the one that cemented the great John Elway's, where he was allowed to struggle through mediocrity between SuperBowl's 24 and 32, or if it's going to be like Favre, where the public applauds loudly and sincerely when the greatness starts to fade, but also  clearly ushers the player toward the exit.  It's a short -sighted fan who can appreciate only greatness.

A sports message from Tarwolf

Xark author Tarwolf has only made one appearance around these parts,  and he doesn't have his author account functioning at the moment, but he sends along this thought which I'm posting on his behalf:

Curious, don't you think, that a single brawl in the NBA elicits howls of outrage, much hand-wringing and angst, oceans of media ink and massive fines,while similar bench-clearing brawls in Major League baseball are met with mild reproach and even some boys-will-be-boys indulgence? Could race be a factor here?

Things that make you go hmmmmm...

Low, wide right and foul

Vice President Dick Cheney threw out the ceremonial first pitch at today's home opener for the Washington Nationals, but the crowd of 25,000 didn't stick to the FOX News script. They booed him loud. They booed him long (watch the Quicktime video via ThinkProgress).

How did FOX handle this incoming-reality crisis, this bit of Heartland kitsch theater gone awry? Well, first they turned off the audio. Then their talking head made sure not to mention to crowd's surly response -- at all.

Let's put that in context. It would be like Cheney going to a photo-op at Yellowstone and being mauled by a grizzly, and the FOX New guy just nervously talking about the administration's brilliant environmental record.

Fortunately for us, the FOX producers turned up the audio in anticipation of the cheer that usually accompanies a typical ceremonial pitch -- only there was no cheer this time. Just loud derision.

What's a FOX media lackey to do? Apparently, the solution is to praise the veep's throw, which started shy of the mound and still didn't make it all the way to the plate:

Let's take a look here. There's the vice president, tossing out the pitch. Not a bad pitch. Seemed like it was over the plate. A little low. A bit of a bounce before it hit the catcher's mitt. Pretty good for the vice president. And of course wearing his Nationals' jacket. Folks in Washington, DC, thrilled finally to have a baseball team back in the nation's capital...

As someone going by the handle War4Sale commented at Think Progress this afternoon: "19% Approval rating!!! Cheney is now less popular than herpes."

Ah yes. Listen to that sound. When a politician can't do a photo-op at a ballpark without being publicly humiliated, something has changed. And it's about time, if you asked me.

Politics, baseball, etc.

After a rainout on Saturday, we got out to our first minor league baseball game of the season Sunday: a double-header at Riley Park on the Ashley River. As the grounds crew fanned out to prepare for the second game and our family scattered, I found myself imagining a life in which one could actually buy season tickets to a minor league team and organize one's schedule and thoughts around homestands.

Which reminded me of politics.

For years I've responded to the "lazy Americans don't appreciate democracy because they don't vote" critique with this idea: Low rates of voter participation do not necessarily mean that voters don't care. It can also mean that Americans have better things to do with their time. And by better things, I mean "the pursuit of happiness." We're the only nation with a founding document that talks about happiness, and that means something.

Politics is an ugly business, and the people who are attracted to it are seldom our best and brightest. So when you see that 85 percent of an electorate in some foreign country has turned out to vote, you can rest assured that things there are pretty bloody awful. People typically turn their full attention to politics only when things have gotten so bad that we can no longer focus our thoughts on more meaningful and productive aspects of life.

So many pleasant things can occupy our time: Family, neighbors, friends, correspondence, games, gardens, books, movies, music. Those of us in the middle class willingly exchange our political attention for these things, offering generous terms, and all we ask is that the political class not screw things up so badly that we have to put our lives on hold to fix them.

Were there problems in America in the fall of 2000? Absolutely. But it seemed a time of moderation: We'd had eight years of a moderate administration, and the choice that fall was between a Democratic moderate and a Republican moderate. So yes, Florida was ugly, and there were dark clouds on the horizon, but I couldn't get all worked up about the outcome. I was beginning to believe there was only one political party in America anyway (the Corporate Party), and that the Republicans and Democrats were just factions therein.

O, to be so dumb and happy again.

We are entering a political age, and the best we can hope is that our institutions remain healthy enough to correct the excesses of recent years, at least in some middling, contrary, average-it-out way. I grew up in the sixties, lived on a commune in the 1970s. I don't need Utopia. I don't want to go back to all that drama, all that us-and-them. That's not a value judgment about who was right and who was wrong -- that's just a 43-year-old guy who got tear-gassed as a kindergartener reflecting on our last political era.

Personally, I'd much rather spend my time on happier subjects. I'd rather lose myself in the rhythms of the minor league baseball season, the hip-hop-inflected challenges of Hampton Park streetball, the promise of the upcoming football schedule. It's spring here. Time to plant peppers and tomatoes, to fall asleep in a folding lawn chair reading Gary Synder.

One hopes there will be time for all that again someday. But this is 2006, and you can't nap in the shade when your house is on fire.

The Best Sports Story Ever

I'd read about this one and thought it was cool. But I just now got around to viewing the video link that my old friend Steve Piacente sent me on Tuesday, and it actually made me verklempt.

This is a CBS News link to Steve Hartman's video report on what happened when the austic team manager of a high school in Rochester, NY, finally got into a game.

Yes, I know this is old, but if you're someone who just doesn't watch TV news, it might be new to you, too. And it's beautiful.

Duke's valedictorian writes...

Bull-moose blog star (and Tar Heel fanatic) Ed Cone's recent newspaper column on a book about the UNC/Duke rivalry got him this piece of fan mail today:

Think about this from a Duke fan's perspective for a moment. You've just paid more than $100,000 for a piece of paper that says you've graduated from a faux-Ivy in a tobacco town, and all that money really bought you was the right to sit next to this guy in a sports bar.

Man. What a great day.

Losing

Luke and I watched the Tar heels lose to George Mason on the TVs down at our neighborhood bar, Moe's Crosstown Tavern (address: 714 Rutledge... slogan: Having a good time on the bad side of town), and as you probably know, the freshman-led squad just couldn't quite get the win.

The fun part was the passionate Carolina fan sitting down the bar who keep shouting about how various Carolina players were "stupid" when they made turnovers, but then cheered those same players wildly when they hit three-pointers down the stretch. The particular target of this guy's scorn/praise was David Noel, who made a few mistakes and balanced them off with some clutch shots. The irony was thick, not that he noticed.

We like to think that something as arbitrary as a game can determine greatness. As Tar Heel fans, we like to think that the 2004-05, 1992-93 and 1981-82 squads were somehow "better" than the great 1984 team, or teams led by Phil Ford. Why? Because those teams won NCAA championships. And we're told that's all that counts.

But of course, it's really not that simple. Greatness can be measured by outcome alone, but that's a very shallow understanding of greatness. And any ballplayer will tell you this: sometimes the shots fall, and sometimes they don't. Is the shot that rims out "bad?" Of course not!

Measuring the Tar Heels' 2005-06 season by a second-round loss in the Big Dance misses the point entirely. The player who is "stupid" one play and "brilliant" the next is the same player. Winning and losing are temporary conditions.

I'm practically a lifelong Tar Heel. Know what my favorite Tar Heel season is?

Next season. Even after the championships: next season.

Good and good enough

As I've said before, I'm a Kyle Orton fan. He's from Iowa, like my mother (born and raised in Eldora); he's got guts and swagger, and apparently he's a smart, fun-loving, bar-going, book-reading kind of guy. He's the second-most winningest rookie QB since the NFL and AFL merged, and he's been an under-rated part of the Chicago Bears' success this season.

But it's time for Bears coaches Lovie Smith and Ron Turner to stop pussyfooting around and get serious about working Rex Grossman back into the starting role.

Kyle improved his play in Sunday's 21-9 loss to the Steelers in snowy Pittsburgh (17-35  for 207 yards, no TDs or INTs), an important step considering his flop two weeks ago in the Bears win against the Packers. After the game, the rooke from Purdue got a vote of confidence from Lovie.

"No quarterback change," coach  Smith said. "I thought Kyle did some good things."

That's the thing with competion, though: Good isn't enough. And Smith knows it.