Quotelog
a reliable record of confusionI am convinced that somewhere there exists a football announcer’s manual with the following section:
! Important Note
Never refer to The Football as simply “the ball.” Always say “The Football.” Also, use the word “Football” frequently (meaning as often as possible). This will remind viewers that they are watching a real Football game. It is also good for morale.
WRONG: Miami is a great team when they run the ball.
RIGHT: Miami is a great football team when they run the football.
You can choose to talk about Football teams, Football players, Football plays, Football fields, running the Football, throwing the Football, and kicking the Football. Come up with your own favorites!
It’s a good thing they say football so often. If we heard that the running back is carrying the ball, we might get confused and wonder if he is carrying a tennis ball or perhaps a bowling ball.
Contrast this to baseball, in which the term “baseball player” is almost always shortened to the more colloquial “ballplayer.” The following remark would seem out of place during a (base)ballgame: “And he caught it in his baseball glove! Just a great baseball play right there, that’s why this is such a great baseball team!”
Fun Super Bowl exercise (for between the commercial breaks): count how many times the word football is used, then estimate how often the “foot” part or the entire word is extraneous!
A lot of people are worried about what will happen if the Earth’s temperature rises a few degrees in the next century. After scraping ice off my windshield for the tenth time this month, I am not one of them. I wish we could have spent less time in school learning to be good environmental stewards and more time on interesting subjects such as Earth history, which is usually prominent in the 8th grade science curriculum right after a detailed classification of sedimentary rocks. Knowledge of our planet’s past can help us overcome the fallacy that our environment is constant, a fallacy that is central to the worldview that humans inherited a pristine Earth and are now immorally disrupting it. We owe our existence to change, and change will continue no matter how many carbon based molecules we end up burning.
Found this on a Wikipedia page:
If our universe is in a very long-lived false vacuum, it is possible that the universe will tunnel into a lower energy state. If this happens, all structures will be destroyed instantaneously, without any forewarning.
Your homework before reading this article is to look at six great umpire ejections.
Some people go to hockey games to watch the fights. Fighting isn’t allowed in other sports, so what really gets the crowd riled up these days is a good old fashioned argument, which means two grownups screaming at each other, one of whom is usually on the verge of a temper tantrum. Fans love it. They cheer when the opposing coach gets ejected. They cheer when their own coach gets ejected. Sometimes they give him a standing ovation for extra theatrics such as throwing a cap. What fine role models. This passes these days for good ol’ family entertainment.
“How was the game, son?”
“The coach had to leave because he got mad.”
When I was about 7, my dad took me to a Twins game. We had the best seats we ever had, right behind the visitors’ dugout. In the middle of the game, designated hitter Jim Dwyer (and you thought you’d never hear that name again) started arguing balls and strikes. I got really scared. I didn’t like it when people got thrown out of games. Sure enough, he got tossed. At the time, I reasoned that getting ejected from a professional baseball game was somewhat equivalent to getting suspended from school.
Lou Piniella is probably the current manager best known for his tirades, which sometimes include acts such as heaving bases or covering up home plate with dirt. (He’s still second fiddle to the guy who pretended to throw grenades from behind the pitcher’s mound, though.) I think a lot of this is for show. But what purpose does the argument serve in the first place? Do they really think that berating an umpire is a good way to get what they want? Many professional athletes don’t graduate college, and probably didn’t pay a lot of attention in high school either, but isn’t self-control supposed to be taught way before that?
I’m also not sure what takes so long to sort these things out. 99% of baseball calls are ball or strike, safe or out. We’re not settling complicated legal cases here. There is no philosophical argument to be made. Most baseball arguments are debates over the participants’ visual acuity. “He looked safe to me.” “No, he was out.” Yet some of these arguments are hotly contested for several minutes. What can they possibly be discussing for that long?
“I could see from the dugout he was safe!”
“Well I’m standing right here and he was out!”
“He was safe and you know it!”
“He was out!”
“Safe!”
“Out!”
“SAFE!”
“OUT!”
“YOU’RE A BUM!”
“NO, YOU’RE A BUM!”
(This is fundamentally how this Earl Weaver argument goes, except it gets much worse.)
Longtime major league umpire Ken Kaiser’s autobiography, Planet of the Umps, naturally devotes a lot of time to umpire-manager “relationships.” Kaiser notes that managers often intentionally get themselves ejected to inspire their team. That shouldn’t be any great surprise to devoted fans. But, interestingly, Kaiser also writes that managers have requested to get thrown out because they can’t bear to watch their terrible team anymore. (If you are even mildly interested in this topic, I highly recommend Planet of the Umps. It’s one of the funniest books ever written by a sports insider.)
I went to a Twins game last season. It was a pretty good game. Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau hit home runs. But the event that really got the crowd going was when manager Ron Gardenhire came out red-faced to argue a call. Gardenhire has such a reputation that umps sometimes toss him as soon as he comes out of the dugout. (Here’s a Gardenhire ejection. Notice how his own fans are rooting for the ejection.) His predecessor, Tom Kelly, was so even-keeled that he was ejected something like 5 times in 14 seasons. Gardenhire broke that threshold in like two months. Kaiser writes of Kelly:
In my entire career, Tom Kelly was the finest manager I saw, as well as a very decent person. Every umpire knew that when Tom Kelly came out of the dugout, you’d better start rerunning the play in your mind, because there was a pretty good chance you got it wrong. Certain managers, not to mention any names like Earl Weaver, came out to argue all the time and, with them, you knew that even if you were wrong you were right – but not with Kelly. T.K. rarely came out to argue; most of the time he came out to discuss the play. He kind of ambled out like a professor, thinking about a lecture he was going to give.
During Ted Barrett’s first big league season he was at first base for the last game of a four-game Twins-White Sox series. On a close play, Frank Thomas had to come off first base to catch a bad throw, then took a swipe at the base with his foot. Barrett called the runner out. It was the kind of play that other managers, not to mention any names like Earl Weaver, might have tried to use to bury a young umpire. To intimidate him – to test him. Instead, Kelly complimented him: “You missed that one, but you had a great series. I think you’re going to be a really good umpire. A good addition to the staff. Just keep working hard.” Barrett just stood there looking at Kelly, maybe even brushing away a small tear, and said nicely, “Thanks, Tom.”
When I coach soccer, I try to take TK’s approach. However, just once, I think it would be fun to run out onto the field and start kicking dirt and blow my top. But that would set a Bad Example, so I don’t. I try to teach my players that occasional, polite lobbying is more effective than whining, and it’s usually best not to say anything at all.
So why do adults act like 8-year-olds during games meant to entertain 8-year-olds? I conclude with my best guesses. First, some of the adults have not progressed beyond the emotional state of an 8-year-old. Second, sports inspire a lot of passion and energy and this can make people forget their civility. And third, perhaps the most interesting hypothesis, the adults who lose control are not in control in the sense that they are spectators. Players can overcome bad calls by playing better. Coaches have no real power over the course of play or the calls, but have a vested interest in the outcome. So they employ a strategy that parents know children to employ when they feel powerless: a lot of whining and complaining until they get what they want.
In the spirit of Stuff White People Like, we now have Awkward Family Photos.com.
——
Also…
LSSU’s proposed list of words to banish in 2010
Warmup quote: just heard one of the Vikings on TV talking about “sub-temperature weather.”
Now for the main material. These are excerpts from Joe Torre’s book, co-authored by Tom Verducci:
[Boston Red Sox owner Larry] Lucchino called a team meeting one day in the team’s clubhouse at its spring training site in Fort Myers, Florida, to introduce Grady Little to the players as their manager. Immediately after Lucchino introduced Little, Martinez was so happy he danced naked around the clubhouse, cracking up his teammates by shaking his member.
——-
There was so much to think about even before throwing a pitch. Clemens lost himself in his usual pregame preparation, which typically began with cranking the whirlpool to its hottest possible temperature. “He’d come out looking like a lobster,” trainer Steve Donahue said. Donahue then would rub hot liniment all over Clemens’ body, “from his ankles to his wrists,” Donahue said. When Clemens pulled up his jock, some liniment would get on his testicles. “He’d start snorting like a bull,” the trainer said. “That’s when he was ready to pitch.”
Merry Christmas!
“Sign up for the Protect Your Balls Dodgeball Tournament for Testicular Cancer Awareness.”
“Wooger makes a good point – I know all about being portly.”
Kevin Gorg
“What we’re trying to figure out now – we have a proposal – is how to change the regulations by which people can spend your money, so that there’s accountability.”
Vice President Joe Biden
I just turned the channel when he said that, and for some reason, I thought he meant something to do with reigning in federal spending. Turns out he was talking about how politicians like himself can have more control over the banking industry.
“I guarantee you…some of those people, those intellectuals, are gonna be talking about too much government regulation.”
You’re right! It only took me about 10 minutes to get this posted.