sports – Page 6 – Complaint Hub

To honor, you have to understand

Am I the only one who thinks this approach reeks of American ignorance? It’s like getting drunk on Tequila in Mexico City and then asking, “Where-o is el bathroom-o?” And it’s not like the words Spurs and Suns don’t have Spanish translations — Espuelas and Sols, respectively. Would that have been so hard? Just tossing “Los” on there is a lazy cop-out, especially since NBA jerseys don’t use definite articles to begin with (well, except for this one). And seriously, does the mere addition of “Los” really strike a chord in any Hispanic fan’s heart? If we’ve got any Latinos out there, I’d love to hear your reaction.

Before I start here, make sure to check out this photo and tell me that you wouldn’t wear a Milwaukee Cerveceros jersey. Anyway, Uni Watch is absolutely right – to honor someone, you must have at least a vague notion of who those people are. In this case, I’m pretty sure “the Hispanic community” is not “a bunch of crazies who use Spanish articles when speaking in English”. Maybe there’s some other “Hispanic community” that I’m not aware of, but I don’t think so. Seriously, it would have taken all of five minutes to look up the Spanish translations of “Spurs” and “Suns”. It would have taken a bit more time and a bit more money to do the extra customization of the jerseys, perhaps, but I can’t imagine they couldn’t make up at least some of the difference by selling Spanish versions of the jerseys. San Antonio and Phoenix, not to mention many other places in the US, have large Spanish-speaking populations that are growing pretty rapidly. If ten thousand New York girls will wear pink Jeter jerseys, is it so hard to imagine that a Spanish-speaking basketball fan might wear an “Espuelas” jersey? I know I can’t speak for the “Hispanic community”, but I suspect that it would have been better for the NBA to just continue to ignore them rather than making this less-than-half-hearted attempt to “honor” them. Edit: Uni Watch has some additional reaction today, from an actual Latino.

All of this just illustrates the point that “Latino” encompasses so many nationalities that it is very hard to get something like this right. But we have been all thrown in the same group, whether we like it or not.

So, this was probably a tough task for the NBA to get right, but I still think they could have at least TRIED.

Well done, Toyota

ESPN – Kyle Busch needed more than his immense talent to nab Toyota’s first win – Nascar

Toyota general manager Lee White stood just inside the iron fence that surrounds Victory Lane at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday and watched Kyle Busch celebrate the first Sprint Cup win for the foreign manufacturer.

Frankly, most of this article is about whining and accusing others of cheating (Which seems to be an all too familiar refrain in all of sports these days), but what caught my eye is that Toyota has its first NASCAR Sprint cup win. I was a NASCAR fan for a couple of years – Dale Earnhardt’s first win at Daytona was the first race I ever watched, and the second race I saw was live at Daytona, the Pepsi 400 in 1998. By the way, I find it amusing that the Pepsi 400 is now known as the Coke Zero 400. Nice job, Coke. It’s interesting to see Toyota coming in. Never mind that Toyota doesn’t have a single car with a V-8 engine. NASCAR doesn’t seem to care that the cars on the track bear basically no resemblance to the production cars they’re named for. And it’s weird to see the 18 car not be Bobby Labonte’s green Interstate Batteries car. Anyway, I haven’t really paid any attention to NASCAR since 2004 or so, but I would have liked to have been there for Toyota’s first win. I wonder if the 300 pound guy in overalls and no shirt with a #3 shaved in his back that I saw at Daytona one year was watching. I’ll bet he was, and I’ll bet he said something disparaging about Toyota at some point in the race.

The dumbest thing I’ve read today

Like ‘O7’s No. 1, Ryan has a lot of questions to answer

Brilliant thought, Andrew. Really smart. I agree totally. Entering the combine, Rice was in the late-second-round realm, and I think he moved up some because he ran a 4.44 40-yard dash, which was about a tenth of a second faster than scouts thought he’d run. The criticism of him was that he wasn’t fast enough to run past corners, but I think he addressed that at the combine.

I don’t know why I read Peter King – I disagree with him on nearly everything. But I was reading this, and wow, am I glad I did. First, King goes on to say that Matt Ryan will be a good quarterback. I saw him play a few times, and I’ll tell you he’s a mediocre quarterback who played for an overrated BC team in a conference where nearly all the traditionally good teams had off years. I expect he’ll be a tolerable NFL quarterback if he gets on a team with a decent line. Anyway, what’s really ridiculous is how King thinks that Rutgers’ Ray Rice has silenced all critics by running the 40 a tenth of a second faster than everyone thought he would. Does he really think that an extra tenth of a second of speed is going to make that much difference? What’s the margin of error on the timekeeping at the combine? I didn’t see Rice play, although people have told me he’s absurd. Successful college running backs are not nearly as hit-or-miss as quarterbacks, and I expect Rice will do well in the NFL. Of course, that’s all ignoring the strategy that I’d take in the NFL draft, which is to trade away my first round (And maybe second round) pick unless I could get a game-changing player, pick up a dozen offensive and defensive linemen in the third round, and go from there.

Where are the nicknames of yesteryear?

Bartolo is Worth a Flyer

Final note: a look at Colon’s B-R.com page reveals that he is yet another modern day star without a nickname. How is this possible? The guy is an orca-fat Dominican fireballer who, by all accounts, has a pretty good sense of humor. If he was around in the 50s he would have been given a nickname so early in his career that we all would have forgotten that his name was Bartolo by now.

I think we’ve, sadly, gotten away from good sports figure nicknames. I mean, how many great nicknames can you think of off the top of your head? The best one I can think of is “The Truth”, Paul Pierce, and the only reason I know that is because the wife is a huge Celtics fan. Is it because sportswriters and sports announcers are hired for being loud and “funny” (Hello, Monday Night Football crew) instead of being good at making the fans feel like they are part of the game? As an aside, my post title is a reference to Catch-22, my favorite book. I’ve heard that phrase used before, and I always wondered if Heller created the expression, or if he was making a play on someone else’s words. Turns out he was. So, kudos to you, Francois Villon. Sorry to the wife for failing to include the squiggle under the ‘c’ in ‘Francois’. Okay, back to nicknames. Maybe I just don’t watch enough sports on TV. Or maybe it’s that sports are so national now that it’s hard to use a nickname because no one will understand it. If you’re a local announcer, you know you get a lot of the same fans, over and over, and they know the local team really well. So you can use a nickname and you won’t confuse too many people. But if you’re a football announcer who knows that the audience for this week’s 4PM game has only seen this team once in the past two years, if that, you probably can’t call their defensive tackle by his truly inspired nickname without stopping to explain who it is and where the nickname came from. No one wants that. All this to say that it’s probably ESPN’s fault.

I should just quit

Nothing ever happens in sports the way I think it will, or think it should. I didn’t really want the Patriots to win, but I would only root for the Giants if they were playing the Cowboys, and even then it’s not a guarantee.

And giving the MVP award to Eli was just stupid. He had a bad game, then a good fourth quarter, assisted in large part by an absolutely spectacular catch by David Tyree. But the difference in this game was the Giants D-Line, and I would have given the MVP to Justin Tuck, with his five tackles, two sacks, and a forced fumble.

The Patriots offensive line, great all season, looked terrible yesterday. And thus it follows that Tom Brady looked terrible, which as usual will remind no one how dependent a quarterback is on his offensive line.

Anyway, I can’t wait for the next few months of Eli Manning talk. That’s going to be awesome. At least Shockey was hurt. That’s the one bright spot here – the Giants went on their playoff run without that clown.

Dear Dan Snyder

ESPN – Zorn top candidate as O coordinator but no Fassel deal yet – NFL

Snyder may take a few days to consider his options. If he decides not to wait until after the Super Bowl to expand his list of candidates, the job could very well go to Fassel, who compiled a 60-56-1 record in seven seasons as the Giants’ head coach (1997-2003), and who led the club to a Super Bowl XXXV appearance. Fassel, who most recently served as the Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinator before being dismissed from that job midway through the 2006 season, was also a head coach candidate in Washington in 2004 before Snyder coaxed Gibbs out of retirement.

Please don’t hire Jim Fassel to coach the Redskins. I’ve gone on record time and again as saying that I don’t want failed head coach Gregg Williams to be our head coach, but he would be infinitely preferable to Fassel. Williams actually seems to be getting the hang of this whole “defensive playcalling” thing lately. He hasn’t been big-blitzing on third down and getting burned so much. The Redskins don’t miss tackles like they did a few years ago. It’s taken him a while, but the defense has actually looked pretty good lately. Which would be a dumb time to change coordinators.

However, I would greatly prefer him to a guy who may have taken the Giants to a Super Bowl (In which they were blown out), but barely compiled a record above .500, and apparently totally lost control of his team in the season before the Giants fired him.

Why would you want that guy to coach your team? If he had a long and illustrious career, and one really bad season that led to his firing, I’d say go ahead and give him another chance. But that is clearly not the case with Fassel. Let some other team give him his second shot. He’ll fail there, and Snyder will save a few million dollars.

I don’t understand why NFL teams keep going back to coaches who fail. If a guy is merely average at his job, and then does such a bad job one year that everyone around him hates him, why in the world would you hire him to do the same thing for you? The Ravens had the right idea when they hired him at a lower level (Offensive coordinator), but then they fired him, too, because he wasn’t very good at that, either. At this point, I would consider hiring him to fetch coffee for the real head coach, but that’s about it.

Now, I know that it’s really hard to be a Ravens offensive coordinator – they’ve never had a quarterback in the history of the franchise. But when your entire job is to make the offense better, and you can’t do it, you should not be getting promoted.

Anyway, I hope we get someone else. Someone who doesn’t have such a track record of failure would be great. And I don’t much care for bringing in anyone from the Seahawks to coach our offense. Although I suppose that anyone who can get a winning offense out of Hasslesuck probably knows a little bit about football.

Please, stop the quarterback worship

Tony Romo. Brett Favre. Tom Brady. Matt Ryan. Anyone starting for USC. It never ends. I just listened to ESPN’s announcers for the Michigan State – Boston College – Champs Sports Bowl heap praises on Matt Ryan, BC’s quarterback, for completing a touchdown pass where the wide receiver clearly pushed off, blatant offensive pass interference that wasn’t called. The announcers acknowledged that this was an illegal play, but STILL talked about how great Matt Ryan is.

Now, here we are, BC is running out the clock. And by running out the clock, I mean not running at all. And Matt Ryan drops back, gets sacked, fumbles, and it’s the offensive lineman’s fault. “Matt Ryan was expecting the block!” So because BC is up 11 in the fourth, but still throwing because their running game is totally nonexistent, and Michigan State is all over the pass, it’s the offensive line’s fault.

The Michigan State QB just made one of the best throws I’ve seen all year. Touchdown, Michigan State, and they are almost covering the spread. If you weren’t watching that, you missed an absolutely fantastic touchdown pass. And now they got the conversion and it’s 24-21.

Matt Ryan can go jump in a lake. He wishes he could make that play. Sure, he’ll go in the first round of the draft, and Michigan State’s Brian Hoyer will definitely not. But that was a sweet play.

However, Hoyer also has three picks. That’s not going to cut it.

Anyway, I don’t want to heap too much praise on Hoyer – that would be a little hypocritical. But this has been a fun fourth quarter. If you aren’t watching, you should be.

As an aside, if you punt on 4th and 1 while losing in the fourth quarter, you deserve to lose. Do you hear me, Michigan State? You DESERVE to lose.

Edited to add: Ryan just fumbled. Clown. Way to be a winner on 3rd and 1 with 2:45 to go.

Edited again to add: Hoyer throws a pick on the first play. Nice job. Both of these quarterbacks seem to want to lose.

A Tribute to Sean

The pregame tribute to Sean Taylor was really pretty moving. Watching the entire stadium waving the #21 towels that they gave out on the way in while they showed a slide show on the scoreboard was pretty intense.

There was a pretty huge ovation, too, when they ran the first defensive play with only ten players.

It’s too bad the team couldn’t come away with a win, but that was hardly the defense’s fault. Since the margin of victory was less than the safety allowed when the offensive line decided to just ignore everyone while Campbell dropped back in the end zone, and we managed almost no offense against the 31st ranked defense in the NFL.

Sean Taylor tribute

So, I haven’t heard all the details. But it looks like Taylor wasn’t doing anything wrong, which is both better and worse. If he really had turned his life around, it’s an even bigger tragedy that he died so young.

Anyway, a ticket to tomorrow’s game just fell into my lap, so I’ll get to see the tribute and pick up a #21 towel that they’re giving out to everyone.

I’m excited to go, although that’s mostly because I haven’t been to a game in years. An old college roommate has season tickets, and when we lived together, I used to go to some of the games with him. But we kind of lost touch after I graduated, and I’m not on his invite list anymore.

So, it should be cool. It’s definitely a winnable game against Buffalo, although we haven’t played too well against that division this year. Two overtime wins against the miserable Jets and Dolphins, and that utter embarrassment against the Patriots.

I’m going to Metro there, which I’ve never done before. Apparently there’s a relatively new Blue Line stop that’s less than a mile away. That should be a disaster after the game, but that’s fine. Getting out of FedEx is always an ordeal.

But it will all be worth it to spend the day yelling and drinking beer.

They couldnt have done it when he hit 754?

The Official Site of Major League Baseball: News: Major League Baseball News

“I have yet to see the details of this indictment and while everyone in America is considered innocent until proven guilty, I take this indictment very seriously and will follow its progress closely,” Selig said. “It is important that the facts regarding steroid use in baseball be known, which is why I asked Senator Mitchell to investigate the issue. I look forward to receiving his report and findings so that we can openly address any issue associated with past steroid use.”

Selig, you’re a tool. This is the same statement he gives every time they advance the case against Barry.

“I haven’t seen him inject drugs with my own eyes, but I take those allegations very seriously.” Barry’ll go to jail and Selig will say, “I haven’t seen him actually sitting in jail, but I take the word of the California Penal System very seriously.”

Anyway, it couldn’t have happened to a bigger (headed) jerk. I haven’t seen anyone mention it, but I’m wondering if he’s gotten himself eligible for a Pete Rose. That would be kind of funny in a sad sort of way if the all time hits and home run leaders were both barred from the Hall of Fame for their off-field actions.

I’m a little sad for the game of baseball, but at the same time, this can’t come as a surprise to much of anyone. Which means that most of the damage has already been done. I hope.

I bet ARod is mad that his smallish contract is getting overshadowed by Barry. Jake Peavy and his Cy Young award, too. I am a little surprised that ARod signed for only $27.5 million a year. I mean, that’s barely more than he’s been making, and significantly lower than the $35 they had been talking about.