- 07:03 PM
- 07/19/08
| Member since: | August 14, 2003 |
|---|---|
| Last visit: | July 8, 2008 |
Uncle Toby has posted 12 links and 82 comments to SportsFilter and hasn’t posted any threads or comments to the Locker Room.
Any Baseball is Beautiful Same goes for wooden tennis racquets. Be sure to click through the slideshow.
posted on Mar 4, 2008 - Go to the detail view for this result
A Small, Good Thing How many 23-yo, female high school band and vocal directors also coach the boy's basketball team at their school? At least one.
posted on Jan 14, 2008 - Go to the detail view for this result
"Ballet aficionados are just sports fans in formal wear. They, too, are obsessed with a physical act, honed by a manic devotion and years of repetition, transformed by the force of one moment, one crowd, and one serendipitous confluence of circumstances into something beautiful. If you’re any good as a writer, you’ll be able to grasp and then channel just a bit of that; if you’re really good, you can do it night after night. But now and then you get it all: the dramatic home run, the perfect quote, the most perceptive take on what everyone saw, and then, if you’re even luckier, you see the story clear in your head and get time enough to hammer it into your keyboard." S.L. Price on sportswriting.
posted on Jul 20, 2007 - Go to the detail view for this result
The Advanced Tennis Reasearch Project Saw this mentioned in an old article about Federer*: "People often speak of a "heavy ball." It is not a technical term. Recently, however, John Yandell, a tennis teacher in San Francisco, came up with a way to quantify heaviness. Yandell runs the Advanced Tennis Research Project, an outfit that uses high-speed film to analyze the strokes of the world's top players. ATRP has been able to measure the spin on a ball in terms of revolutions per minute. . . . Velocity plus spin equals weight. The heaviest ball Yandell and his team have ever recorded was a forehand that Federer hit at Indian Wells in 2004: 4,400 rpm, 80 miles an hour. Thwock." *that shamelessly takes its title from John McPhee's classic.
posted on May 2, 2007 - Go to the detail view for this result
Accession Notes: In Praise of Athletic Beauty A review of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht's In Praise of Athletic Beauty: "Gumbrecht has the ordinary sports fan in mind as an audience. Perhaps the 'educated' sports fan might be more accurate; someone with a passing familiarity with history, and the interest in seeing sports in historical context. One thing is clear: Gumbrecht is not providing an academic defense of the many 'readings' of sports of which he is so critical. Sports, in Gumbrecht's view do not need such a defense; they have the intransitive quality of being 'for themselves'." A good sign: no mention of Huizinga's Homo Ludens.
posted on Nov 28, 2006 - Go to the detail view for this result
The World's Greatest Athlete? The Journal sought to identify the world's greatest athlete with an approach that, while not completely scientific, took a number of measures into account. A panel of five sports scientists and exercise physiologists was given a list drawn up by the Journal of 79 male athletes. Candidates had to be active in their sport and among the all-time best.
posted to General at 11:47 AM CDT
Johnson says he'll return medal Olympic great Michael Johnson says he was "shocked" by former teammate Antonio Pettigrew's doping admission and will return the gold medal the two of them helped the United States win in the 1,600-meter relay at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
posted to Olympics at 7:54 AM CDT
a quote from Johnson
deeply disappointed in Antonio and in the sport of athletics
furthermore, his favorite form of writing is literature, and he is fascinated by the governmental form of politics.
That's the IOC's traditional name for "track and field"
On topic: He did the right thing. Which is also, frequently, the difficult thing.
posted at 12:55 PM CDT on June 6
Henin retires. Number 1 ranked Justine Henin has announced her immediate retirement from professional tennis.
posted to Tennis at 10:30 AM CDT
I'm with Chico. I always wanted to like her as much as I liked her backhand. Which, by the bye, I began to tire of, somehow. It seemed . . . self-conscious, or something. Like it was calculated to please a coach. The fault was in me, of course, for extending my irritation with her persona to annoyance with a stroke that a hacker like me can only dream about.
posted at 3:53 PM CDT on May 14
Top 10 Unbreakable Sports Records Whenever the inevitable debate arises among sports fans concerning the record that is the least likely to ever be broken, many people are quick to cite Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hit streak. But there are many others...
posted to General at 6:59 PM CDT
I love achievement that's out of proportion--numbers that loom like mountains no one will ever climb. Good stuff, here.
My favorite unmentioned record? Cael Sanderson's collegiate record of 159 wins, ZERO losses. He wrestled at Iowa State, and I'm a Hawkeye fan, but this one doesn't hurt. It's so huge and impressive. Anyone with an inkling of what elite wrestling requires knows what that number means.
posted at 1:26 PM CDT on April 18
Critics Go Ape Over LeBron James Magazine Cover A picture of NBA star LeBron James and the model Gisele on the cover of April's Vogue is attracting controversy over their pose. The shot taken by renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz has been compared by some detractors to King Kong holding Fay Wray. ESPN.Com columnist Jemele Hill called it "memorable for all the wrong reasons." The photo is remarkably similar to "Destroy This Mad Brute," a famous World War I recruitment poster.
posted to Basketball at 10:16 AM CDT
As an African-American co-worker once explained to me, "When someone else gets their toes stepped on, you don't get to tell them how much it hurt. That goes double for when they get hit in the head. And when their racial identity is attacked, you should forget about giving them advice on how they ought to feel about it. That's for them to decide. Your job is to listen to what they have to say about it."
Or words to that effect. It has been a few years, but it was an eye-opener for me as a 25 year old white guy whose job was working with low-income, primarily African-American kids.
Anyway, in this case, I'd be amazed if the photographer and the editor didn't know the subtext. There were certainly hundreds of shots to choose from. They picked out this one. They knew what they were doing.
I wonder what LeBron would have said if they had shown him the poster and the picture side-by-side and asked him to endorse their choice.
posted at 2:01 PM CDT on March 27
Any Baseball is Beautiful Same goes for wooden tennis racquets. Be sure to click through the slideshow.
posted to Baseball at 9:22 AM CDT
Very nicely said, Howard_T. Like baseball gloves, baseballs are hard to throw away. Even the raggediest are good for something . . . like the last few pitches to your kid before you retrieve them from the outfield . . . probably carrying them in a five-gallon bucket . . .
posted at 12:38 PM CDT on March 4
Brett Favre Retires Brett Favre has told the Packers and coach Mike McCarthy Tuesday morning he's planning on retiring after 17 seasons.
posted to Football at 9:07 AM CDT
My eight-year-old son is going to be so bummed . . . he heard some announcers speculating on Favre's retirement at the end of the season, and he told me to change the channel. To him, every interception was the receiver's fault.
posted at 12:46 PM CDT on March 4
A Small, Good Thing How many 23-yo, female high school band and vocal directors also coach the boy's basketball team at their school? At least one.
posted to Basketball at 8:32 AM CDT
Hardly earth-shattering, but a nice Monday-morning curiousity, I hope.
More about her is available here, including the information that, "At P-C, Brock is both the vocal and instrumental music director for students from fourth through 12th grades, in addition to being yearbook advisor, junior class sponsor and head boys’ basketball coach."
I visit school like this--the writer notes that with 41 total students, it's "one of the smaller 1-A schools in the state"--pretty often, and can attest to the multitasking required of the coaches. Some drive the bus to away games, too.
posted at 8:41 AM CDT on January 14
If you don't do what I say, I'll take my football home! Lawyer, multimillionaire, University of Washington alumnus, and former three-term Everett, Washington mayor, Ed Hansen wants his way. And if the University of Washington wants $200,000 for law school scholarships all they have to do is fire their football coach and athletic director. [more inside]
posted to Business and Law at 2:27 PM CDT
Maybe should Ty should just donate a matched amount, no strings attached.
posted at 3:44 PM CDT on January 10
Bob Sanders wins AP Defensive player of the year honors Could a more deserving player win this award? Sanders' smash-mouth style of play makes him a joy to watch and indispensible to the Indy Defense.
posted to Football at 10:48 PM CDT
I became a Colts fan the day Sanders signed with them--the fact that Dallas Clark is there, too, just makes them more fun to watch for this Iowa fan.
He was a lot of fun to watch in Iowa City--you could see teams becoming aware of him and designing schemes to stay the hell away from his part of the field.
posted at 11:25 AM CDT on January 8
Flights of Fancy: "In pursuit of a childhood dream, one man packed in his job to see if he could make it as a professional sportsman. Well, darts player, anyway. After a year at the oche, he tells his humbling story of growing obsession, drinking Guiness before 10am, and learning some hard lessons." What? No "darts" category? Gosh.
posted to Other at 2:04 AM CDT
There's a lot to like in the essay. My favorite bit:
"If ever there was a situation where taking part mattered to me more than winning, this was it."
I include myself in the very large number of people who apply that lesson to sport and life both.
Almost the most impressive thing about his story is that it broke in the media and he weathered the storm. The fact that he came out of it unresentful and, apparently, pretty happy says a lot about him.
posted at 2:26 PM CDT on January 8
Knicks Disappoint The Entire World New York Knicks owner James Dolan promised free tickets to all remaining Knicks games to UN ambassadors if the team won Tuesday night vs. Golden State at Madison Square Garden. How'd that work out? Not too good. After the Knicks got pounded by the Warriors, 108 - 82, even a seasoned diplomat like UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was moved to say of the Knicks, "they're playing poorly, very poorly, and I'm disappointed."
posted to Basketball at 8:23 AM CDT
Post title of the month! Even beats rcade's bold "show us your tits" gambit.
Isaiah Thomas failing to suppress a smirk while the crowd booed Marbury was just . . . precious.
posted at 8:51 AM CDT on November 21
Some consider them only another piece of equipment. They don't understand that baseball gloves, like the game, are eternal.
posted to Baseball at 8:54 PM CDT
Nice link! (Odd that it's a little older than your average FPP link. But still nice.) Makes me miss my late-70s vintage Wilson Richie Zisk glove . . .
posted at 1:30 PM CDT on November 1
Why Roger Federer Doesn't Care Who He's Playing and why Rafael Nadal does well on clay. [via kottke]
posted to Tennis at 11:57 AM CDT
That's a fantastic comment, Howard_T. Reminds me of reading "Zen in the Art of Archery," by Eugen Herrigel. In many of its most memorable passages, Herrigel describes a problem he has with a technical aspect of archery and his teacher's unexpected, non-technical answers.
One memorable episode involves the release, which, with a high-powered recurve, can be quite difficult. His teacher's advice was to release the string "like a child holding a grownup's finger. You know how firmly a child grips; and yet when it lets go, there is not the slightest jerk, because the child does not think of itself, it is not self-conscious, it does not say, 'I will now let go and do something else,' it merely acts instinctively. That is what you must learn to do. Practice, practice, practice. The shot will come as effortlessly as snow slipping from a leaf."
I believe that's what we've come to call "the zone," no? And for certain, highly-practiced athletes, the crafting of a shot, as it were, is not really a matter of choosing among alternatives. There is too little time for that.* Concentration means ignoring the decision tree, not processing it faster. That eliminates a great deal of self-consciousness and doubt. (A great flaw of hackers like me is changing the shot 3-4 times before actually striking the ball.)
One of my frequent opponents as a teenager was incredibly frustrating to play, because he simply didn't care what the score was, how hot it was, what kind of wind was blowing, how I behaved, etc. He simply played the point in front of him. Never smiling or frowning, certainly never tossing racquets or kicking his water bottle, he acted like he was a ball machine playing a ball machine. In lots of ways, his game was technically weak, and over time I learned to beat him--mainly by acting more like him--but when I was a hot-headed 15-yo, he let me over-think everything and self-destruct.
Apologies for the off-the-rails essay, but good links and comments will do that to a guy on a Friday morning.
*One of the best points DF Wallace ever made in his many tennis essays was the role of time in tennis success--good players with enough time will hit devasting shots, but better players "simply deny [their opponent] that time." The difference is measured in microseconds.
posted at 9:21 AM CDT on September 28
"Ballet aficionados are just sports fans in formal wear. They, too, are obsessed with a physical act, honed by a manic devotion and years of repetition, transformed by the force of one moment, one crowd, and one serendipitous confluence of circumstances into something beautiful. If you’re any good as a writer, you’ll be able to grasp and then channel just a bit of that; if you’re really good, you can do it night after night. But now and then you get it all: the dramatic home run, the perfect quote, the most perceptive take on what everyone saw, and then, if you’re even luckier, you see the story clear in your head and get time enough to hammer it into your keyboard." S.L. Price on sportswriting.
posted to Culture at 9:26 AM CDT
Howard_T: What a terrific comment. Funny, pop culture likes to pidgeonhole engineering types as soul-free, analytical Gradgrinds, but the engineers I know always talk about experiences like yours--the moment when rigorous preparation yields excellence--with great passion.
Moreover, your notion of being at once owned and sustained by a passion marks your son as fortunate in his father.
For my part, the joy Price finds in mastery--both his own and others'--reminds me of the first stanza of Hopkins's "The Windhover":
The Windhover
To Christ our Lord
I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
Gerard Manly Hopkins
posted at 2:09 PM CDT on July 20
I'd like to see some wrestlers and some rowers on this list, but "speed" as a criterion probably holds them back. (Also the bogus "Success and Competitiveness" category.) Still, they've gotta rank pretty high for power, stamina/recovery, and coordination/flexibility.
And what about competitive lumberjacks? They've got a lot going for them, especially when you factor in the logrolling part.
On preview: Bode's an interesting suggestion--wouldn't have thought of him.