As some of you already know, we have been working on a documentary video project called “Brooklyn to Beijing” about three New York City amateurs trying to make the 2008 US Olympic Boxing Team.

We were going to wait until next week to officially announce that the first four episodes are up, but a sharp-eyed scribe at Maxboxing gave us some love while we were still trying to be coy with the beta-testing.

So with the cat out of the proverbial bag, we just want to make sure our homepretzels are not in the dark. Check out: No Mas TV.

The four episodes online now follow middlewight Danny “The Golden Child” Jacobs. He’s from Brownsville, he’s won four NYC Golden Gloves titles, he looks kinda like Carmelo Anthony, his hands are ridiculously fast, and he is already, in his own words, a “ghetto celebrity”.

Over the next couple of weeks, you’ll also meet Will Rozinsky from Ozone Park and Saddam “World Kid” Ali from Canarsie.

As we build the interconnected “Brooklyn to Beijing” storylines, we look forward to hearing feedback from our core peoples on what’s working and what isn’t. So please hit us with your thoughts when you can.

Thank you for supporting.

Keep the gloves up,

ci

Hell of a birthday crew today, including one of the original No Mas Hall of Fame inductees, the Splendid Splinter himself. The best of the rest include… two tennis players, one on the roids and one who probably should be, a tawny-locked Czech midfielder, perhaps alpine’s most dashing and dignified legend, every fantasy dork’s wet dream, Louisiana’s greatest demagogue, an Irish swimmer turned poker player, a Philly-born cartoonist who keeps on truckin, a long-forgotten member of the Bombers’ best, the weed-smoking Chief, the towel-chewing Tark, and last but certainly first in Large’s heart, the one and only heart-pounding Tugger.

How time flies. And records are made to be broken. And a slew of other appropriate clichés. Thirty years ago today, the Cardinals’ Lou Brock stole two bases against the Padres at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego, raising his career total to 893, a total that made him baseball’s reigning King of Base Thievery. The record he broke was set by an immortal, Ty Cobb, who with sharpened spikes and a hateful grimace had barrelled his way to 892 career steals, a mark that stood unchallenged for 49 years. When Brock retired from baseball, he left the new record at 938 steals, but of course his record would not last so long as Cobb’s. No one could have known in 1979, Brock’s last season, that that the seeds of Lou’s supplanting had already been sown in Oakland, where a flashy rookie named Rickey was already stretching his young legs, notching 33 steals in only 89 games, an auspicious beginning to a record-breaking lifetime of burglary on the basepaths.

No Masians, I’m sure you can imagine what I think about the Roy Jones/Felix Trinidad fight. The last we saw of Tito, he was being out and out humiliated by Winky, and that was over two years ago. Meanwhile, Roy Jones, once among the most exciting pure talents in boxing history, has now turned his career into a once-annual humiliation tour – one fight each in 2005 (humiliating loss to Tarver), 2006 (humiliating win over Prince Ajamu), and 2007 (humiliating appearance in the ring with somebody whose name I don’t care to remember.)

Suffice it to say, the Roy/Tito bout is a joke, and I’m surprised to read today that it looks like HBO is going to take the bait and run this as a PPV sometime in January. I’ll say it now and I promise to stick to my guns – I will not buy this fight. That said, both of these guys were glorious in their heydays and rather than dwell on the ignominious present, in true No Mas fashion I’d like to revisit the more harmonious past. Roy has already starred in a Knockout of the Week (The Legend of Roy), so for today’s K.O.W. I thought I’d throw some love to Tito by featuring his startling, stentorian stupefaction of William Joppy in 2001, Trinidad’s last hurrah as an undefeated fighter before Bernard busted his brains out later that year. Enjoy.

Penny for your thoughts, Tony Soprano. Since episode one, season one, when the ducks flew off from your pool, you signaled your love for animals. In fact, you felt more solace in the presence of animals than with humans. Remember sitting with your thoroughbred horse Pie-O-My while she rested in her stable? The rain came down outside, soothing the rage inside you. The capper was when a goat entered, bleating. It was probably your happiest moment in the entire series. Now let’s flash forward to when you heard that Pie-O-My had died in a fire. You were more than a bit perturbed when Ralph Cifarello vaguely admitted his part in killing your favorite horse. So, of course, you beat the shit out of Ralphie, strangled him and then had Christopher dismember the corpse.

Which brings me to Michael Vick, the anti-Tony Soprano. These days, you can beat your wife, smoke craclk, bugger a sophomore cheerleader, impregnate Bridget Moynahan out of wedlock, but whatever you do, DON’T hurt an animal. It is perhaps the most serious moral infraction in America’s immorallly hyper-moral landscape. For instance, remember when Chef, Clean and Lance lit up that boat full of Vietnamese in Apocalypse Now? Chief thought they were running guns, but the girl was just hiding her puppies – only when they discovered the dogs did the waterworks start, because, you know, puppies are sad. Skip from Indochina to Japan. Tsunayoshi Tokugawa was the fifth Tokugawa shogunate of Japan. He wasn’t no Richard Chamberlain, but he became known as the ‘Dog Shogun’ because he was so obsessed with dogs that he passed laws which protected dogs sometimes to the detriment of his own people. Speaking of which, remember what it was like walking down the streets of NYC in the 80’s wearing a fur coat? Man, it was hard out there on a pimp. Faster than you could say Sherwin Williams, you’d get some Minuet White thrown up on your sable.

We watch movies and TV shows with body counts galore. But god forbid a bad guy lays a finger on little Sally’s dog! Now he is evil. Which brings me back to Tony. For all of his sociopathic faults, for all his murdering and burning and looting and extorting, one redeeming quality he offered was a soft spot for animals, and somehow we were expected to take that as sign of his essential decency. We know for a fact that he would request far more than just a sitdown with Mr. Vick. There is nothing worse to a murderer like Tony than murdering an animal. I’m not saying that Vick is better or worse than Lawrence Phillips, Rae Carruth, Eugene Robinson, or Tony Soprano. All I’m saying is that he picked the wrong crime at the wrong time. He’s a felon all right, but a felon that killed Old Yeller.
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This post comes to us courtesy of Gentry Kirby (Tulane ‘93), a freelance TV producer who plied his trade with SportsCentury for many years. He also produced the ill-fated Classic Now on which he had the pleasure of working with Large. Real estate and family took him down to Charlotte where he developed a taste for NASCAR, and where the warm weather has enabled him to strengthen his golf game.

(With the Hall debates about McGwire and Bonds swirling, we take you back to the biggest Hall debate of them all – Charlie Hustler, the hit-king and the king of the clowns, who signed his own death notice 18 years ago today.)

On this day in 1989, Pete Rose accepted a lifetime ban from baseball. Major League Baseball had the goods on him – iron-clad evidence that Rose had been gambling on games for years, including betting on his own Reds while managing the team.

Rose knew he was dead to rights. Why else would he willingly agree to a lifetime ban? But it was the wording of the agreement that really screwed him up. In signing, Rose admitted that there was a reason for his ban, but did not admit what that reason was. MLB, meanwhile, agreed to not release the findings of their investigation into Rose’s gambling habits and to remain mum on the topic. It was a nod-nod-wink-wink situation of the highest order, and one can only imagine that Rose was motivated to sign it with an eye toward the Hall of Fame. Well aware that no man known to have gambled on baseball, no matter how great he was, would gain entry to the Hall, Rose obviously thought this little bit of sleight of hand might keep his candidacy alive.

So he bullheadedly, ridiculously stood by his claim for years – yes, I gambled, but not on baseball. It was quite a gamble in its own right – very Pete Rose, really. Damn the torpedos. Of course, he lost, and he lost big. But it was bound to happen. As any good gambler knows, you can’t bluff when the other guy’s holding the nuts.

All born today, and submitted for your approval – a motivational speaker with one sack on his stat line, a motivated golfer who just can’t seem to win the big one, the best fake sports agent in the history of fake sports agents, the best basketball player in the history of Lower Merion High School, the best basketball player in the history of the Netherlands, perhaps the 20th century’s most graceful dancer and most athletic drummer, an Winter Olympics legend and a Summer Olympics darling, two quarterbacks (one great, one not so much), two baseball players (one great, one incredibly old), and last but certainly not least, the strongest man ever to regularly wear a dress.

(What with Jose Offerman’s recent bat-slinging escapade, it seemed appropriate to take you back to this day in 1965, with a Classic No Mas piece on the infamous John Marichal/John Roseboro/Sandy Koufax showdown at Candlestick. Note the similarities in the two pictures, Offerman on the right and Marichal below. Not much has changed it seems in the business of mound-chargin’ and bat-wieldin’.)
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This was a brawl right here. First of all, look at two of the principals – Juan Marichal and Sandy Koufax. Also note Marichal brandishing the bat. That would cost him dearly.

On this day in 1965, one of the ugliest fights in baseball history occurred, a donnybrook of mythic proportions between the Dodgers and the Giants. There had been some bean-balling in a game two days prior, and in this game, Dodgers’ catcher John Roseboro reputedly wanted Koufax to knock down Marichal. When Koufax refused, Roseboro took the job on himself, whipping a return throw to the mound very close to Marichal’s head. A screaming match ensued, and Roseboro threw off his mask to better express himself. At that point Marichal landed a couple of clean bat-shots to Roseboro’s head.

All hell broke loose. Bats were brandished by other players. Roseboro was led off the field by Willie Mays, bleeding profusely. His wound required fourteen stitches.

Marichal was suspended for nine days and fined the then-considerable sum of $1,750. But the damage stretched far beyond the immediate punishment – the incident would haunt Marichal the rest of his career and may have postponed his entry into the Hall of Fame.

One wonders if Robby Alomar will suffer a similar fate for the gob of spit he planted on John Hirschbeck’s face in 1996 . Somehow I doubt it. Outrage just ain’t what it used to be.

The Travers Stakes is an icon of American racing because it has been around forever. Well, almost. The race was first run in 1864, and it has been renewed every year since, making the Travers Stakes the longest continuously run stakes in the history of American racing.

The first Travers was won by the fine colt Kentucky, owned by John Hunter and William Travers (that’s Travers pictured on the right), for whom the race was named. Travers was also president of the Saratoga Association, which ran the race meetings at the upstate New York spa during the boisterous mid- to late-19th century.

The press today might prime their slings and arrows if a track president raced the winner of its most prestigious event, but the previous era in racing was , if not kinder and gentler , at least less suspicious of a bit of good fortune in an endeavor where all the participants are fighting for the same end: the winner’s circle.

Nor did the result seem unwelcome considering that Travers was a well-regarded man of means with a sense of humor. Once, it is said, while passing an establishment of the snootier sort, a companion asked Travers whether the gentlemen on the veranda were habituees of the club. He assessed that not all of them were. Some, he said, were sons of habituees.

Thanks in part to the seasoned humor of this old-style racing man, we will be celebrating the 144th running of the Travers Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 25, and Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense will be favored to add this historic race to his list of accomplishments. Despite his many successes, Street Sense will need his running shoes to match the performance of the Travers winner 40 years ago. No winner was more emphatic in his domination of the Travers than Damascus in 1967 (video below). Already the winner of the Preakness and Belmont Stakes when he entered the Travers, Damascus blew away his opposition , literally swamping them on a sloppy racetrack , by 22 lengths , and made himself the apparently invincible champion of his age. When he won impressively from older competition in the Woodward Stakes and Jockey Club Gold Cup in September and October, Damascus earned his selection as the Horse of the Year.

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Frank Mitchell lives on a farm where he writes and raises horses about 30 minutes from Keeneland. He’s written two books on horse-racing and writes a regular column on Thoroughbred bloodlines for Daily Racing Form that can be found at drf.com.

You know who’s a tough son of a bitch? Arthur Abraham, that’s who. This Armenian-born, German-bred tank is the current IBF champ at 160, and is one of two people to beat Edison Miranda, the other of course being Kelly Pavlik, who fights for Jermain Taylor’s belts this September. Now granted, Abraham got his jaw broken in two places while defeating La Pantera, while Pavlik just busted out his pimp cane on the motherfucker. But still, it seems about time that King Arthur get thrown into the mix in all the talk of superfights at 160. His team has hinted that he’s ready for a big debut in the States. I wonder if the winner of Pavlik/Taylor would deign to face him. Then again, you have to wonder if the winner of Pavlik/Taylor is going to be able to stand up for a few months after they face each other.

Anyway, I thought I’d stoke the Abraham fires by featuring him as our Knockout of the Week – I was actually going to do that last week with his knockout of Sebastien Demers but I’m glad I didn’t, because this one is much better. Abraham won the fifth defense of his IBF title in stunning fashion this past Saturday, with a neck-wrecka of a knockout over fellow Armenian Khoren Gevor. This is one of those picture-perfect KO’s, a short, precise uppercut, a bobblehead doll, and goodnight Irene. Look at the way Gevor just hangs there lifeless on his knees for a few seconds before collapsing backwards to the canvas – it’s ridiculous. Thanks Chief for directing me to the video (man they get these shits up on Youtube quick). While you’re checking this out people, let’s all fantasize about a Pavlik/Abraham unification bout sometime next February.