- 06:59 PM
- 11/07/09
| Member since: | August 14, 2003 |
|---|---|
| Last visit: | November 05, 2009 |
Uncle Toby has posted 14 links and 90 comments to SportsFilter and 0 links and 2 comments to the Locker Room.
Iowa High School Football Legend Killed in Weight Room by Former Player: Ed Thomas--football coach at Aplington-Parkersburg, 2005 NFL High School Coach of the Year, mentor to four current NFL linemen--was shot and killed today while supervising players during summer weightlifting. ESPN profiled A-P and Thomas last year after a tornado destroyed the school, Thomas's house, and most of the town.
posted by Uncle Toby to football at 04:46 PM on June 24 - 3 comments
And what of events in Kinchasa?: In 1971, Alistair Cooke enjoyed the outcome of Ali-Frazier I:
It is not enough for a lifelong Methodist* to wait for justice on Judgment Day. He preserves a deep yearning to see sinners get their comeuppance here on earth. And last night all the rumbling warnings of his boyhood came meanly, beautifully true.
Not the first time he wrote about The Greatest, either.
* who apparently skipped Proverbs 24:17-18: Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: Lest the LORD see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him.
posted by Uncle Toby to boxing at 03:26 PM on June 11 - 9 comments
Any Baseball is Beautiful: Same goes for wooden tennis racquets. Be sure to click through the slideshow.
posted by Uncle Toby to baseball at 09:22 AM on March 04 - 5 comments
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 by Uncle Toby to basketball at 08:32 AM on January 14 - 2 comments
"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 by Uncle Toby to culture at 09:26 AM on July 20 - 9 comments
My wife and I were just talking about this. Our 9-yo son is playing in the NFL Flag Football league for the third year, and he's a bit bored. He says he's ready for tackle.
I've taken him to Big 10 and some high-caliber FCS games, and while he was awed by the size, speed, and power of the players, he didn't really grasp the danger inherent in these guys running into each other time and time again. But my wife and I both winced when we saw safeties barrelling into receivers. Just imagining our kid getting hit like that makes my hair stand on end.
That said, I'm going to allow him to do the Pop Warner/junior high thing and see how it goes. I'm not ruling out any possibilities in any direction.
posted by Uncle Toby at 11:45 AM on September 30
Pretty great!
Two notions come to mind:
1. Emphasis once again how different tennis reality is from the rather bland, textbook tennis coaching I was treated to in my youth. Open stances on the forehand side were actively discouraged. As a serve-and-volleyer, I spent as little time as possible behind the baseline, but what few forehand drills I tolerated early on were of the "step forward into your forehand" variety. That was fine when I was small and playing with a tiny wooden Wilson Jack Kramer, but later, playing at hs varsity pace, with various midsized graphite sticks, I wish I'd had some more imaginative coaching on that score.
2. I would LOVE to see a similar analysis of clay court footwork. The mechanics of the sliding groundstroke are an athletic marvel on par with anything else in sport for difficulty.
How great is it to watch game film with someone who can break it down like that, esp. with no regard for its conventional broadcast value?
David Foster Wallace, who had a lot more tennis experience than most tennis fans, once noted how many insights on the game he gleaned from watching a match with an experienced coach. A few years ago, Agassi was a commentator for about half a set for a US Open match between Federer and somebody I can't recall. His comments were few but very specific--he pointed out small but important aspects of the game that I'd never have noticed on my own.
posted by Uncle Toby at 11:44 PM on September 01
A perfect game in baseball is taken as a triumph of the defense, while soccer scores at least look like failures of the offense?
posted by Uncle Toby at 03:44 PM on July 24
PAM SHRIVER
That would make this my favorite off-court tennis story of all time.
posted by Uncle Toby at 09:08 AM on July 17
dviking, I think that riposte has some merit, but it overlooks the urgency of realities like hunger. Children starve in the meantime. And how many stable jobs are created in third-world countries by conspicuous consumption?
C.S. Lewis addressed this question:
In any event, the choice isn't simply between giving people handouts and buying expensive toys. Plenty of charities do infrastructure stuff.
posted by Uncle Toby at 05:13 PM on July 06
How about Peter Singer's take on how disposable wealth should be used?*
The Sparknotes version: if you have disposable wealth, and are aware that it could be used to save lives (e.g. mosquito nets, food for the hungry), and choose instead to spend it on luxuries (e.g. multiple opulent houses, extravagent cars), then you have decided that those possessions are more important than human life. Singer says you need to own up to the fact that you think upgrading your tv set is more important than the good that money could do for children in dire poverty.
Regardless of whether you buy Singer's argument, doesn't it seem incredible that Tiger could donate $90m and still have $10m left to play with? In what way would his life be diminished if he did that?
Singer's great fun to debate with college students--I used to assign the essay just to watch the fireworks the next week. But I take his point seriously. And I take Ricardo's point just a seriously, because it reminds me that my time and hands could be contributing much more than they do, right here in my own community.
* For the the purposes of this discussion, I consider Singer's other, even more controversial ethical standpoints to be irrelevant.
posted by Uncle Toby at 02:51 PM on July 06
Thank you for that heads-up, MrFrisby. Wish I'd done my homework. In any event, I'm with everyone else--I hope Folkways is okay.
posted by Uncle Toby at 03:53 PM on June 12
I've heard that hunters with documented disabilities can use crossbows; otherwise, they're usually illegal for hunting. I wonder if that's the background here . . .
posted by Uncle Toby at 05:06 PM on June 11
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.
posted by Uncle Toby at 02:28 PM on June 20
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 by Uncle Toby at 12:55 PM on June 06
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 by Uncle Toby at 03:53 PM on May 14
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 by Uncle Toby at 01:26 PM on April 18
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 by Uncle Toby at 02:01 PM on March 27
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 by Uncle Toby at 12:46 PM on March 04
Des Moines Marathon Delayed by Train
I know someone who was there. He said it was the dumbest thing he's ever seen at a big race. Turns out the organizers had sent the route to the railroad and they said no problem. Apparently, the matter slipped their minds day of the event!