- 12:13 AM
- 06/20/13
| Name: | David Wertheimer |
|---|---|
| Homepage URL: | http://www.netwert.com |
| Member since: | May 29, 2002 |
| Last visit: | April 18, 2013 |
werty has posted 14 links and 28 comments to SportsFilter and 0 links and 0 comments to the Locker Room.
Texas Rangers' bankruptcy affects players most of all: The top six unsecured creditors in the Texas Rangers' bankruptcy filing are players, including Alex Rodriguez, current Rangers 3B Michael Young and, um, Mickey Tettleton.
posted by werty to baseball at 10:57 AM on May 25 - 7 comments
Don Koharski off to quieter pastures.: The longtime hockey referee's 32 solid seasons are overshadowed by the doughnut incident with Jim Schoenfeld in 1988.
posted by werty to hockey at 01:45 PM on April 10 - 0 comments
Bill Walton flies coach: "The seat that I absolutely must have in order to be comfortable: The right-side, aisle seat. No bulkhead."
posted by werty to basketball at 09:05 AM on May 30 - 13 comments
Despite constant innovation, golf scores remain unchanged.: Interesting expose in the NY Times about golfers--pro and amateur--whose relentless pursuit of distance and technology hasn't cumulatively lowered handicaps.
Choice pull quote: "'They watch golf on TV and then they all want to hit it far, like Tiger Woods,' said Dr. Bob Rotella, golf's best-known psychologist and a best-selling author. 'Well, good luck. They should be going to their teacher and saying, "I want to hit it like Fred Funk." Physically, they are much more like him. That would make a lot more sense.' Mr. Funk is a 5-foot-8, 48-year-old PGA Tour pro who ranks first in driving accuracy and 186th in driving distance. He is also seventh on the PGA money list this season with more than $1.9 million in earnings."
posted by werty to golf at 01:14 PM on May 24 - 6 comments
"If steroids are cheating, why isn't LASIK?": The basic answers to this one are fairly obvious (legality, medical intent, theoretical limits to what can be achieved, etc.) but an interesting essay on Slate highlights a big question for the future. Will we reach a point where even genetic modification is a normal occurrence, and sports stars are formulated rather than trained?
posted by werty to culture at 08:30 AM on April 19 - 40 comments
Grum, NoMich, I can confirm that the pull-down trick works in reverse, and without necklaces. It revolves around qi and balance. I'm no expert but I've been to doctors who practice applied kinesiology and use it to find structural weaknesses that are tied into stresses and emotions. (I'll stop there before I start sounding too New Agey. My experience has to do with tinnitus, tangent yadda etc.)
I found it so fascinating that I've tried it myself on my wife and gotten it to work. You can do it too:
1. Have a person hold out his or her arm parallel to the floor and resist a push. For an added touch tell the person to think about something pleasant.
2. Press down on the forearm. For most people resistance is easy.
3. Now tell the person to think of something troubling or sad. (I think on my wife I said something like "think about our baby's fever from the other night.")
4. Press down again, and watch as the person suddenly has no ability to push back.
Again, I don't get why it works, but it does. Whether or not the sports necklace helps restore balance, who knows--the demo could easily be rigged. But philosophically it's not impossible.
posted by werty at 10:47 AM on October 20
And while I'm here, Borg-Tanner at Wimbledon, 1979. Look how gentle the game was! (With metal rackets, too.)
posted by werty at 11:33 AM on June 29
Assessment of Roscoe Tanner's serve force. I wish I had seen this show as a kid.
posted by werty at 11:30 AM on June 29
Meanwhile, the Stanley Cup Finals scored their highest TV ratings since 1974.
posted by werty at 09:26 PM on June 15
Via the Awl, which also noted (right as I was thinking it) that the Mets are paying Bobby Bonilla a million bucks a year until 2035.
posted by werty at 10:57 AM on May 25
The spots were directed by Alejandro Gonzlez Irritu, best known for the feature films Babel and 21 Grams.
posted by werty at 04:20 PM on May 23
The big issue, to me, is the whole 11-minutes-of-ball-in-play that was widely reported over the winter. There's a lot of downtime at a football game. Baseball has a lot of downtime, of course, but you're often enjoying beautiful weather and whiling away the time, whereas football weather can be much different. (Also, baseball lends itself to extensive debate and contemplation. Football is about the action, which makes the waits much more painful.)
posted by werty at 12:11 PM on March 29
It will be interesting to watch what happens to the Yankees when their mid-90's personnel core finally retires. Jeter has said he wants to play for awhile yet, which ensures the team's top-level identity. But the combination of Jeter, Posada and Rivera is the homegrown soul, not to mention three of its best players. Who are the Yankees when they go?
For all the Joba jabber, none of the new guys has reached top-tier status (and I say this as someone who repeatedly points out Cano's top-10 AL batting average and Melky Cabrera's walk-off knack). At least one of the callups has to be ascendant to get a little organizational continuity.
The Yanks were a half-step from turning into the circa-2001 Orioles the past two years--lots of free agents and few wins. CC and Teixeira have been good enough to hold that off. But for how long?
posted by werty at 04:23 PM on October 21
Remember, too, that Steve Phillips had a different, and equally public, consensual affair in 1998 with a Mets employee while employed as the Mets' GM.
posted by werty at 04:17 PM on October 21
There's a lot more to being an elite athlete than raw talent. Ask Stephon Marbury.
Mickelson has some unbelievable skills that make him a terrific talent and personality. Does he not always focus on the right things? Sure. Does that make a shot like this any less awesome? Definitely not.
JJ: Winged Foot the way you played it is much different than the course the pros play. The greens are far faster and trickier, the rough thicker. Oh, and there's the whole on-the-cusp-of-winning-the-U.S-Open thing. Doesn't take away from his poor decision-making, but don't think your experience matched his in any way.
posted by werty at 10:22 AM on July 02
Glanville's been writing for some time. He's a University of Pennsylvania grad and one of the more literate and eloquent baseball players of our time.
See also: http://www.ivyleaguesports.com/documents/bh04-penn-glanville.asp
posted by werty at 02:27 PM on March 05
As a longtime tinnitus sufferer I've known this for years. A well-hit drive makes quite a crack. I often came home from a round of golf with a louder ringing in my ears than before playing. For awhile I was wearing earplugs to tee off, although I'm not playing enough these days to worry about it.
posted by werty at 11:41 AM on January 05
Last night NBC profiled a softball player who "defected" to Russia to play in these Olympics, too. She's 31 and didn't make the US team. Other athletes have done it as well.
On the one hand, dyams is right--if he's not good enough to play for Team USA, the US shouldn't care if he plays elsewhere. From a patriotic angle, though, it's quite a contrast from, say, Lopez Lomong or Bernard Legat, who are proudly competing as US citizens after coming to America to pursue their dreams.
posted by werty at 01:47 PM on August 18
Signing Damon isn't the most impressive move of the winter, but it is a solid maneuver for the Yanks. In all seriousness, Bubba Crosby--a 29-year-old with a .221 career batting average--is not the kind of player the Yankees put in center field. The team had to find someone more substantial, and a four-year deal (rather than Scott Boras's overreaching seven-year request) is not outrageous. Damon's stats are still solid; his batting average has increased three years in a row. I'm not sure I understand what makes him a great leadoff hitter, though, given that he's trending toward 15 stolen bases next season. Jeter has roughly equal speed and a better OBP, although he tends to hit better in the 2 slot. Still, I like the signing. As a Sox fan I think this sucks. And therein lies the extra money George paid.
posted by werty at 08:46 AM on December 21
Pujols Going to Angels for 10 Years, $250 Million
I'm sad as a bit of a baseball purist to see Pujols go to the highest bidder. He traded 50 years of adulation for the guaranteed contract, and I imagined him being the kind of person who would like that lifelong community stability. Of course, if someone waved $50 million under my nose, I might do the same as he just did.
I appreciate @holden's perspective on fandom. I suspect most Mets fans felt the same way about losing Reyes the other day: yes, we wanted the guy, but he got how much to leave? Oh, okay, then.