As usual, a few things on my mind today…
1. I find it entirely comical that Isiah Thomas, the President of Basketball Operations of the New York Knicks, took a verbal shot at Bill Simmons this past Monday on an ESPN Radio program with Stephen A. Smith. In effect, Thomas told Smith that if he and Simmons were ever to meet on a street in Manhattan, that someone would go home with a bloody nose (and you can assume Zeke wasn’t talking about himself). Honestly, how could you ever say such a thing on live radio? I don’t even care that it happened on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I just can’t believe that the head of a pro basketball team would get so worked up over comments made by a sports humorist like Bill Simmons. Simmons has written many kind things about Thomas over the years, calling him the best pure point guard of all time and an amazing evaluator of talent, among other things. Thomas is far too sensitive. After all, the New York press is far more hostile to him that Simmons has ever been. Why call out a twerpy guy from Boston that you’ll probably never meet? Why make yourself look so bad? It’s comical. I’m going to the Knicks game tomorrow night vs. the Detroit Pistons and I happen to have floor seats. If I see Zeke there, I’ll tell him Sports Guy says hi.
2. I’m sure that this paragraph will not be very well received but I’m going to write it anyway. I saw something on ESPN.com’s Page 2 which really offended me. In the upper right-hand corner of the page, just above the navigation toolbar is a small red box where the Page 2 editors post their sarcastic one-liner of the day. Usually I don’t give them a second thought but today…it just got to me. It reads: “Where we’re rooting against whoever A-Rod plays for.” Obviously this is a reference to A-Rod’s decision to play for the U.S. team in the World Baseball Classic. I, like most others, am a bit tired of seeing the stories about A-Rod wanting to play for the Dominican team, then the U.S. team, then no team at all and now back to wanting to join the U.S. team. For starters, I find it disgraceful that ESPN would actually root against the U.S. team just because A-Rod is a member. Even if meant tongue-in-cheek, it’s still, at best, in poor taste as a comment. I’m not one for mindless flag-waving but to root against one’s own country just because of one player – that’s ridiculous. Rooting for another country is perfectly acceptable – I plan on rooting for Japan and the Dominican Republic in addition to the U.S. – but have a little more dignity than to root against the American team out of spite. Beyond that is something else that ESPN has failed to mention in constantly lampooning A-Rod’s supposed wishy-washy nature – the issue of coercion. Sure, it may seem hard to imagine that a grown man of 30 years, a multi-millionaire, would be forced to do anything he didn’t want to do but let’s not be so unsophisticated as to think that the only person calling the shots here in Alex Rodriguez. The World Baseball Classic is the brainchild of Bud Selig and Gene Orza, the commissioner of baseball and the chief operating officer of the players union, respectively. They want the biggest stars in the game to participate because it means more money for them and their constituencies. For that reason, there has been relentless pressure and behind-the-scenes arm-twisting on the part of league management and the players union to get the game’s biggest star to play in the tournament. So before we trash A-Rod for this, lets think about what it’s like to have a thousand people screaming in your ear, telling you what to do, what your obligations are, how you owe it to them. It doesn’t sound pleasant, does it?
3. While I’m on the subject of the World Baseball Classic, the more I think about this stupid concept, the more I hate it. It’s a completely arbitrary competition, which, unlike the Olympic Games, doesn’t even put on the pretense of promoting world peace and understanding through athletics. This is something concocted by the commissioner and the player’s union to drive business. Now, I’m all for business, but, as a baseball fan first and foremost, I hate to think that the game’s best players are being put in harm’s way for free, supposedly for “their country.” That’s rubbish. I only wish that team owners took a more vocal stance and forbade their players from participating. What comfort does George Steinbrenner get if Damon, Jeter, or A-Rod gets injured at these games? What comfort does our friend the Hitman get if Juan Pierre pulls his oh-so-delicate hamstring and ends up stealing 15 bases for the Cubs in 2006? I hate this stupid World Baseball Classic. My only hope is that TV ratings are so poor that the event goes away after this year.
4. Finally, to come full circle back to Bill Simmons…I love the guy, I love his column, I love the fact that he’s a more eloquent and funnier version of me. Basically I respect the hell out of a guy that is making a career out of sports writing from a fan’s perspective. Except for one thing. He’s a complete spin-artist. That he even has the gall to intimate that the Broncos won because of poor officiating is just flat-out ridiculous. The Patriots played as bad a football game as a team could play and only lose by 14 points. Come on, 5 turnovers? No running game? How did the refs realistically change the way the game turned out? And, Bill, if you’re going to play the “refs fixed the game” card, just remember – if the NFL had its druthers, the Patriots would’ve won, not lost. So shut up already about the Patriots and start coming up with good one liners and spin-jobs on why the Red Sox aren’t a complete mess and a laughingstock.
1. I find it entirely comical that Isiah Thomas, the President of Basketball Operations of the New York Knicks, took a verbal shot at Bill Simmons this past Monday on an ESPN Radio program with Stephen A. Smith. In effect, Thomas told Smith that if he and Simmons were ever to meet on a street in Manhattan, that someone would go home with a bloody nose (and you can assume Zeke wasn’t talking about himself). Honestly, how could you ever say such a thing on live radio? I don’t even care that it happened on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I just can’t believe that the head of a pro basketball team would get so worked up over comments made by a sports humorist like Bill Simmons. Simmons has written many kind things about Thomas over the years, calling him the best pure point guard of all time and an amazing evaluator of talent, among other things. Thomas is far too sensitive. After all, the New York press is far more hostile to him that Simmons has ever been. Why call out a twerpy guy from Boston that you’ll probably never meet? Why make yourself look so bad? It’s comical. I’m going to the Knicks game tomorrow night vs. the Detroit Pistons and I happen to have floor seats. If I see Zeke there, I’ll tell him Sports Guy says hi.
2. I’m sure that this paragraph will not be very well received but I’m going to write it anyway. I saw something on ESPN.com’s Page 2 which really offended me. In the upper right-hand corner of the page, just above the navigation toolbar is a small red box where the Page 2 editors post their sarcastic one-liner of the day. Usually I don’t give them a second thought but today…it just got to me. It reads: “Where we’re rooting against whoever A-Rod plays for.” Obviously this is a reference to A-Rod’s decision to play for the U.S. team in the World Baseball Classic. I, like most others, am a bit tired of seeing the stories about A-Rod wanting to play for the Dominican team, then the U.S. team, then no team at all and now back to wanting to join the U.S. team. For starters, I find it disgraceful that ESPN would actually root against the U.S. team just because A-Rod is a member. Even if meant tongue-in-cheek, it’s still, at best, in poor taste as a comment. I’m not one for mindless flag-waving but to root against one’s own country just because of one player – that’s ridiculous. Rooting for another country is perfectly acceptable – I plan on rooting for Japan and the Dominican Republic in addition to the U.S. – but have a little more dignity than to root against the American team out of spite. Beyond that is something else that ESPN has failed to mention in constantly lampooning A-Rod’s supposed wishy-washy nature – the issue of coercion. Sure, it may seem hard to imagine that a grown man of 30 years, a multi-millionaire, would be forced to do anything he didn’t want to do but let’s not be so unsophisticated as to think that the only person calling the shots here in Alex Rodriguez. The World Baseball Classic is the brainchild of Bud Selig and Gene Orza, the commissioner of baseball and the chief operating officer of the players union, respectively. They want the biggest stars in the game to participate because it means more money for them and their constituencies. For that reason, there has been relentless pressure and behind-the-scenes arm-twisting on the part of league management and the players union to get the game’s biggest star to play in the tournament. So before we trash A-Rod for this, lets think about what it’s like to have a thousand people screaming in your ear, telling you what to do, what your obligations are, how you owe it to them. It doesn’t sound pleasant, does it?
3. While I’m on the subject of the World Baseball Classic, the more I think about this stupid concept, the more I hate it. It’s a completely arbitrary competition, which, unlike the Olympic Games, doesn’t even put on the pretense of promoting world peace and understanding through athletics. This is something concocted by the commissioner and the player’s union to drive business. Now, I’m all for business, but, as a baseball fan first and foremost, I hate to think that the game’s best players are being put in harm’s way for free, supposedly for “their country.” That’s rubbish. I only wish that team owners took a more vocal stance and forbade their players from participating. What comfort does George Steinbrenner get if Damon, Jeter, or A-Rod gets injured at these games? What comfort does our friend the Hitman get if Juan Pierre pulls his oh-so-delicate hamstring and ends up stealing 15 bases for the Cubs in 2006? I hate this stupid World Baseball Classic. My only hope is that TV ratings are so poor that the event goes away after this year.
4. Finally, to come full circle back to Bill Simmons…I love the guy, I love his column, I love the fact that he’s a more eloquent and funnier version of me. Basically I respect the hell out of a guy that is making a career out of sports writing from a fan’s perspective. Except for one thing. He’s a complete spin-artist. That he even has the gall to intimate that the Broncos won because of poor officiating is just flat-out ridiculous. The Patriots played as bad a football game as a team could play and only lose by 14 points. Come on, 5 turnovers? No running game? How did the refs realistically change the way the game turned out? And, Bill, if you’re going to play the “refs fixed the game” card, just remember – if the NFL had its druthers, the Patriots would’ve won, not lost. So shut up already about the Patriots and start coming up with good one liners and spin-jobs on why the Red Sox aren’t a complete mess and a laughingstock.
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