Lot of big name fighters in action this weekend – Antonio Tarver, Vernon Forrest, Chavez Jr., Jorge Arce, even ole Chop Chop Corley, who fights tonight in Miami. None of these fights, however, include top-notch opponents, and so are mostly biding-their-time, cashing-that-check type fights, especially for Chavez, who fights tomorrow night on flippin PPV against Ray Sanchez, a fact that should give you some idea of what kind of pull the name “Chavez” has in the Mexican boxing universe.
So without a big bout to plug, I thought rather than look forward to the Floyd/Hatton fight (we’ll be doing plenty of that next week), I would look back to tell the story of a little-known ring classic. The fight I have chosen for our No Mas Knockout of the Week goes all the way back to 1994, when the Hitman Tommy Hearns took on none other than Martin “Raw Dog” Lawrence.
I know what you’re thinking – how the goddang hay-ell did Martin end up in the ring with Tommy Hearns? Martin’s like a featherweight and in ’94, shit, Tommy Hearns was 175 in a speedo.
Well, see, it all went down like this – Martin fought in a charity boxing match where Hearns happened to be a celebrity judge. After stomping his man mercilessly (poor form for a charity event, but hey, that’s how the Raw Dog DO), Martin threw an afterparty for himself back at his crib. Hearns showed up, disrespected the Raw Dog, and then proceeded to hit on Mardy-Mar’s lady, the stupid fineness highness that is Gina. Still juiced from his big KO, Martin takes offense. After slinging a few choice insults (“They call you the Hitman? Well I just got a call from Sugar Ray… he calls you the GET Hit Man!”) he challenges him to a fight, and it’s ON.
Of course, in the cold light of the next day, Martin regrets his bravado and fears for his life. But then his soul brother number one Cole informs him that he saw Hearns getting onto an airplane earlier in the morning. Martin realizes, hey, Tommy Hearns ain’t gonna hang around in town for no two weeks to fight me! He got better things to do! So Martin plans to train and show up for the fight anyway. That way, when Hearns doesn’t show up, he’ll look like the bigger man, while the crowd will think that the Hitman punked out.
Surprisingly, at the very last second, Hearns DOES show up. And despite the urging of Gina and the main man Stan (“sometimes it take a big man… to run like a little girl”), the Raw Dog goes through with the fight. What ensues is one of the more bizarre prize-fights in the history of the ring. Hearns wins by knockout in the second, and trust me, you ain’t never seen a knockout like this? Marciano/Louis? No. Marciano/Walcott? Uh, not even. Hearns/Cuevas? Dah… Tommy gave Pipino a little love-tap compared to what he does to poor Mardy-Mar. Enjoy.
Ah Brett Favre leading his Packers into Texas Stadium for a late-season showdown with the Cowboys in a possible NFC Championship Game preview between the two best teams in the conference.
Obviously, the year is 1996. Monica Lewinsky is still surfing the carpet of the Oval Office and the world is blissfully none-the-wiser. There are few cell phones and no IPods. Lance Armstrong is riddled with cancer and his prognosis looks bleak. Bob Dole is triumphant in defeat. Where have you gone, Admiral Stockdale?
The Pack and the ‘Boys have played each other only twice in the last ten years, which is strange, because during the 90′s, when each team had a run as the premier franchise of the NFC, they played almost every year during the regular season, and three years in a row, from ’93-’95, in the playoffs.
Of course, that is an era of the Green Bay/Dallas rivalry that Cheeseheads would like to obliterate from their cerebral cheddar cortexes. In the ten games played between the two teams in the 90′s, the Cowboys won nine of the them. From 1993-97, they played seven of those games, and Dallas won them all.
The signature game of that stretch, and indeed of the Packers/Cowboys rivalry in the 90′s, was the 1995 NFC Championship game, played in January of ’96, and won by Dallas en route to their win over the Steelers in Super Bowl XXX. Favre, who later won his first of three straight MVP awards, was stellar in the game, throwing for two scores, but he was outdone by the Big Three, Aikman (2 TD passes), Irvin (2 TD’s) and Emmit (2 TD’s). In the fourth quarter, Larry Brown gave everyone a Super Bowl preview, intercepting Favre to set up the Cowboys’ last scoring drive.
The next season, ’96, the Pack won the Super Bowl, but they still couldn’t get the Dallas monkey off their back, losing to the ‘Boys 21-7 in a marquee, week 12, Monday Night Championship game rematch that was the regular season game of the year (seven Chris Boniol field goals for Dallas in that one, tying the NFL record). Indeed, one could argue that the only reason the Pack won their Super Bowl that year was because Carolina beat Dallas in the Divisional Playoff. Barry Switzer and the Big Three had Green Bay’s number at that point for sure, and had they gotten past the Panthers, they would have headed into Lambeau with a world of confidence.
Green Bay finally exorcised the Dallas demon in ’97, throttling the Cowboys 45-17 on a 4-TD afternoon from Favre. The game ended what was at that point an eight-game losing streak to the silver and white, and transported Cheeseheads everywhere back to those glorious Ice Bowl days of yore, when Lombardi’s warriors used to push around Landry’s laundrymen like the upstart sissies that they were.
Steve, I was really into those Sampras/Fed matches, and just the concept of two dudes who have a… well not just a claim, but pretty much a complete ownership right now of the Best Player Ever debate going head to head. Other than the Sampras/Fed Wimbledon match, are there any other matches historically where two guys with such a claim played each other competitively? -Large
The Roger and Pete show has been better, more competitive, and more buzz-generating than any fan had a right to think it would be. But that may have been part of the plan, as they have another match scheduled for Madison Square Garden next March. A win by Sampras this weekend just made that one a lot more enticing, wouldn’t you say?
Men’s tennis has a long history of aging legends going down valiantly to the big dogs of the day. In the Pre-Obscene-Money era, the best guys hung around as long as they could and often overlapped with the next generation. You can trace a line of descent from Bill Tilden, who dominated in the 1920s, to Federer in just five matches.
1941: Tilden, 48 and 10 years past his prime, plays 25-year-old Don Budge, who had won the Grand Slam two years earlier, in a 58-match tour. Tilden loses 51, but wins seven. 1957: Budge, 41, beats the No. 1 pro in the world, Pancho Gonzalez, 29, in straights in L.A. 1971: Gonzalez, 43, beats 19-year-old Jimmy Connors in three sets, also in L.A. 1989: Connors, 36, beats Sergi Bruguera, a future French Open champion, in Germany 2000: Bruguera, 29, rolls an 18-year-old Federer 6-1, 6-1
Tilden: five times as good as Federer!
As far as all-time greats going at each other face to face, that tends to happen as one is on the way up and the other on the way down. By definition, there’s room for only one alpha dog at a time,if Fed and Sampras had played over the same years, neither would own as many Slams as he does today. Perhaps that explains why the Borg-McEnroe Wimbledon matches are so well remembered. At the time, Borg was beginning to be called the greatest player in history; three years later, many polls had McEnroe as the Goat (greatest of all time). Their rivalry is the only time I can think of where two guys at that very, very, very top level went head to head in their primes.
Here’s a list of a few of the other legend vs. legend face-offs from the relatively recent past:
Rod Laver d. Pancho Gonzalez, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5, 6-4, U.S. Pro Championships, 1964
Until the Open era, a top player would typically ascend to a position of dominance in the amateur ranks and then, to make a buck, he’d disappear into a pro tour that consisted of one-nighters held in gymnasiums across the world. It’s too bad these events weren’t better covered, because they featured big tournaments and hundreds of matches between all-time greats,one decade’s best player would have to dethrone the previous decade’s. The biggest annual event was the U.S. Pros, at Longwood, outside Boston. By ’64, Gonzalez, the reigning champion of the 1950s, had won eight U.S. Pros. He went for his ninth in a massive storm against Laver, who had won his first (amateur) Grand Slam two years earlier. They played through the rain and wind,men were men, etc.,and by the time it was over the world had a new best player. Laver would go on to win the event five times.
Laver vs. Bjorn Borg I had no idea until I looked it up yesterday that these two had even played a real match. But by the ATP’s calculations, they faced each other seven times from 1974 to ’78 , as Laver was aging and Borg was rising. Borg got the better of him in five of those matches, including the last four. The first time they played, on carpet in Barcelona in ’74, the baseliner Borg sent the net-charger Laver home 6-1, 6-1. (I wonder how many times in his career the Rocket lost by those scores?) Their best match came in Dallas the following year, also on carpet. It was a long five-setter won by Borg.
I’ve seen a tape of a semi-exhibition tournament they played in Hilton Head in 1977,watch two minutes of it below (with Pancho commentating; talk about a Goat-fest). I remember Borg, so it was the 30-something Laver who was the revelation for me. I haven’t seen many clips of him, and I was awed by the consistency of his shot-making,he could do anything with the ball,and his high-energy, all-court attack. (Check out that low forehand volley from no-man’s land.) You could see that John McEnroe learned a lot from watching his fellow lefty as a kid. On this day, neither Borg nor Laver seemed to have a distinct advantage over the other. Like Federer and Sampras, they were from slightly different eras, but they belonged on the same court.
Borg vs. John McEnroe As I said, we remember this rivalry well because it was that rare moment in sports when two of the best ever are at their peaks at the same time. No wonder Borg quit when McEnroe took his spot at No. 1,he may have realized that there was only room for one Goat at a time, and he couldn’t conceive of himself as anything else.
As far as how their games matched up, I think my fellow TENNIS editor Pete Bodo had the best take on it: Borg made himself virtually unbeatable because he was willing to play longer points and hit one more ball into the court than his opponent; McEnroe came along and negated that advantage by ending points as quickly as possible. Borg couldn’t counter it, and their 1981 U.S. Open final, which McEnroe won in four sets, sent the Swede into retirement at age 26 and spelled the end of the last golden era of men’s tennis. It would take McEnroe a couple of years to adjust to not having another Goat to play. He could never respect Ivan Lendl the way he did Borg.
Pete Sampras vs. Ivan Lendl and McEnroe, 1990 U.S. Open
The next era-shattering event occurred at the Open nine years later. I’ve written here before about Sampras’ mind-boggling quarterfinal win at 19 over Lendl, who had reached the previous eight Open finals. But Sampras followed it up by ending McEnroe’s last real chance at a Slam in four sets. McEnroe had been usurped by Lendl five years earlier, but the two played what could be called the same game,they were flipsides of the same 70s-80s coin. In this match, Mac was playing against a new type of player. Sampras brought the Big Heat, and all of McEnroe’s chips, spins, and angles couldn’t hold it back. He was done for good. Power tennis had just gotten a little more powerful.
Sampras vs. Federer, 2001 Wimbledon
Funny how these things go in decades, isn’t it? Eleven years after Sampras announced the future at the Open, he faced it himself at Wimbledon. This was the only time the two current Goats played each other for real. Federer won a long, winding, intermittently brilliant five-setter. He broke down afterward, and Sampras gave him what I’ve always thought was the most dignified handshake in the history of the sport,class of the titans, I guess you could call it. Here are some highlights from the match and the Sampras post-match interview:
Playing-wise, what sticks out now is how often Federer came to the net. The grass was a little quicker then, and it was still the consensus wisdom that you had to serve and volley to win at Wimbledon (Lleyton Hewitt would put that idea to rest the following year.) Plus, against Sampras you had little choice. Unlike today’s players, he could take the net from you if you didn’t take it from him first. The differences in their games are clear during this match: Sampras hit a heavier, more penetrating ball; Federer was smoother and more consistent all around. The new all-baseline era was about to begin.
Sampras vs. Federer, 2007 That brings us to last weekend’s exhibitions. There’s only so much you can take away from an exo. Not only are the players not giving their absolute best, they’re not even really allowed to; a lopsided win is the ultimate faux pas in these things. Still, I was struck by one thing: Sampras’ serve. I’d forgotten that it was the most effective single stroke in the history of tennis. Smooth, efficient, technically dead on, it was still good enough five years later to keep Sampras in these matches by itself. I know Federer wasn’t going out of his way to break Sampras, but I was surprised he didn’t get a better read on his serve. I’m used to seeing Federer handle even the most lethal deliveries with nonchalance.
Over the past year, I’d gradually begun to believe that Federer in his prime was a better player than Sampras in his,Fed just has more ways to beat you. I’m not going to change back because of three exhibitions on fast courts, but seeing that Sampras serve again was enough to make me say, ‘Hmmm, not so fast…†It’s classic hedgehog-fox: Federer knows lots of ways to win, but Sampras knows one big way. Honorable Mention: Andre Agassi vs. Jimmy Connors, 1988 and ‘89 U.S. Opens; Andre Agassi vs. Roger Federer, 2004 and 2005 Opens
As an 18- an 19-year-old, Agassi beat an aging, angry Connors twice at the Open, the second time in five sets. As a 34- and 35-year-old, he lost two close matches to Federer, the first time in five sets. The standard line in tennis is that you can’t compare eras, that there’s no way that 5-foot-8 Rod Laver with his little wooden racquet could have stood on the same court with the 6-foot-2, midsize-wielding Federer. I’ve always agreed, but Agassi’s career,and, to a lesser extent, the Borg-Laver and Fed-Sampras exhibitions,makes me wonder whether that concept is as self-evident as we think. Agassi, who was never a candidate for greatest-ever, was there to finish the former No. 1 Connors off when he was a kid, and he was still there to challenge the next era’s No. 1 two decades later. (In fact, he gave Fed his biggest challenges at the Open each of those years.) Who knows – maybe tennis’ eras aren’t as different as we think, and the very best would have found a way to compete on their own terms in any of them. Maybe all we can say about Laver, McEnroe, Sampras, Borg, and Federer is: Once a Goat, always a Goat.
—————————————————————————————- Steve Tignor is the executive editor of Tennis magazine – for more of his writing, check out his weekly column, The Wrap, on the Tennis website.
On this day in 1895, an enormously wealthy Swedish Renaissance man who, among his many accomplishments, invented dynamite, signed his last will and testament at the Swedish-Norwegian club in Paris, thereby dedicating a large portion of his fortune to creating what would become over the course of the next century the most famous and prestigious prizes in the world. Alfred Nobel died of a stroke just over a year after signing the crucial document – the first Nobel Prizes were awarded five years after that, in 1901.
A much lamented oversight on Nobel’s part here at No Mas, there was no provision made in his will to provide for a Prize in the Field of Athletic Achievement. Nevertheless, among the various winners in the other categories – Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace – there have been many a notable sportsman and important sporting connections. I will list just a few of these below, with the initial assertion that no, Johnny Unitas did NOT win a Nobel Prize in Anything despite what you or I might have been taught, and a further caveat that I am far more familiar with the Peace and Literature wings of this particular Hall of Fame than those other complicated scientific endeavors:
1906 – Theodore Roosevelt – Peace
It’s ironic that Mr. Big Stick himself won the Nobel Peace Prize, but indeed he did, for brokering the Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War. Of course, most of the rest of Teddy’s life was dedicated to unbridled combat and killing. He was an avid big-game hunter and pursued the fistic arts throughout his life as a form of spirited recreation. Overcoming a sickly childhood, Roosevelt became a prize-winning pugilist as a youth, and was the runner-up in the Harvard boxing championship of 1880.
1907 – Rudyard Kipling – Literature
Despite pretty much inventing in poetry and prose the stiff-upper-lip code of manhood that has loomed as the lofty ideal for all of John Bull’s affairs, sporting and otherwise, ever since, Kipling’s most important athletic contribution are undoubtedly the words of his rah-rah poem, “If”, that today are writ large above the entrance at Wimbledon through which the players pass onto Centre Court:
If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two impostors just the same
1922 – Niels Bohr – Physics
One of the giants of 20th century physics who would later become famous as a mastermind of the Manhattan Project, Bohr won the Nobel in 1922 for his model of the atomic structure. Bohr’s lesser-known brother, Harald, with whom Niels was very close throughout their entire lives, was a Danish football star, and played on Denmark’s Olympic squad at the 1908 Olympics in London, where he won a silver medal.
1923 – W.B. Yeats – Literature
The ur-Irish poet was a known fan of the sweet science, as was his brother, the artist Jack Butler Yeats, who painted a beloved No Masian masterpiece, The Small Ring (pictured right) in 1930.
1925 – George Bernard Shaw – Literature
Also a sweet scientist of note, the famous Irish playwright wrote a hilarious novel about a fighter trying to woo an aristocrat called Cashel Byron’s Profession. Later on in his life, Shaw became a mentor of sorts to the boxer-scholar of note, Gene Tunney – the two were lifelong friends and correspondents.
1929 – Frederick Hopkins – Medicine
Sir Frederick made quite a major contribution to the future of nutrition – he discovered vitamins. He also discovered that repetitive muscle contraction leads to the production of lactic acid, the prevention of which has been a focal point of endurance athletes ever since. But it is for his work on vitamins that Hopkins won the Nobel, and also for which I mention him here, because without vitamins and the subsequent universe of dubious nutritional supplements, where on earth would today’s sports figures turn for an alibi when they are caught using steroids?
1952 – Ernest Hemingway – Literature
I imagine, if you have even a passing familiarity with No Mas, you are aware of our position on Papa. He basically established the blueprint for our entire project, one that begins with, as I have written before, a requisite fascination with the three b’s – baseball, boxing and bullfighting (the photograph on the left is Hemingway as a young ex-pat in Paris, where he often rented himself out as a sparring partner to make ends meet). More than maybe any other literary figure in history (Lord Byron? Virgil?), Hemingway illustrated that the sporting life and the life of the mind are in no way mutually exclusive. For that alone, he is our patron saint. One final note – it was the publication of The Old Man and the Sea that finally tipped the Nobel scale in Papa’s favor, that novel in which he mythologized Joe D, “the great DiMaggio,” long before the leggy Mrs. Robinson was even a twinkle in Paul Simon’s eye.
1957 – Albert Camus – Literature
As a young man in Algeria, Camus was a great footballer, a goaltender. His days on the pitch, however, were scotched by a bout of TB that he contracted in 1930. I include Camus because of an exchange I once had with an elderly editor at Columbia University Press when I was working there. While discussing Camus, this chap made a remark along the lines of “well, I guess we have tuberculosis to thank for giving us one of the greatest authors of the century.” I vividly remember thinking, “yeah, but we also have it to thank for taking away a great footballer, so what’s the bloody bleedin difference?” On this score, when once asked which he more preferred, football or the theater, Camus replied, “Football, without hesitation”, a quote that I must say I prefer to his far more popular jersey slogan – “All that I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football.”
1962 – Max Perutz – Chemistry
Perutz is best known for supervising James Watson and Francis Crick in their breakthrough experiments that ultimately determined the structure of DNA. But Perutz himself won the Nobel due to his explanation of the molecular structure of hemoglobin, which is the oxygen-transporting protein in red blood cells. Without this work, there would today be no blood doping, no EPO, and consequently no one would have won the Tour de France in the last 30 years.
1969 – Samuel Beckett – Literature Waiting for Godot and a slew of hilarious though largely incomprehensible novels are not the only claims to fame for this iconic Irish author. He is also the only Nobel laureate in history to have his own entry in the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack (for you unknowing No Masians, this is to cricket what the Ring Encyclopedia once was to boxing). Beckett was both an accomplished batsman and bowler at Dublin University.
1970 – Norman Borlaug – Peace An agricultural scientist and humanitarian giant, Borlaug won the Peace Prize in 1970 for his tireless work to decrease world famine. Among his many honors are the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and enshrinement in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. While a student at the University of Minnesota, Borlaug (pictured on the right in his grappling days) was a championship wrestler, and reached the Big Ten semifinals in 1937. While still in college, Borlaug organized the high school program in Minnesota and served as a referee in the first regional and state tournaments.
1993 – Nelson Mandela – Peace
Mandela was a boxer as a young man, and later would write eloquently of his love of the sport in his autobiography: “I was never an outstanding boxer. I was in the heavyweight division, and I had neither enough power to compensate for my lack of speed nor enough speed to make up for my lack of power. I did not enjoy the violence of boxing so much as the science of it. I was intrigued by how one moved one’s body to protect oneself, how one used a strategy both to attack and retreat, how one paced oneself over a match. Boxing is egalitarian. In the ring, rank, age, color, and wealth are irrelevant. When you are circling your opponent, probing his strengths and weaknesses, you are not thinking about his color or social status.”
2005 – Harold Pinter – Literature This English playwright is famously obsessed with the sport of cricket, a lifetime fan of the Yorkshire Cricket Club and chairman of the Gaieties Cricket Club (whatever the bloody hell that is). There are frequent references to the sport in his work, and in his house, he evidently has a life-size portrait of himself as a younger man swinging a cricket bat. Also, Pinter wrote a well-known poem about the post-war legend Len Hutton, (pictured right) a poem that in only two lines seems to say about all there is to say about growing old and nostalgic as a sports fan:
I saw Len Hutton in his prime
Another time, another time…
(I think that I have mentioned in these annals before that my all-time favorite baseball cards were the 1977 Topps cards. I was seven years old, which played a big part in that. But I still think they were great cards, and there were a few in particular that stand out in my mind – Dave Parker, Jay Johnstone (for some strange reason), and maybe my favorite of them all, the Fred Lynn All-Star card. I really loved the way they denoted the All-Stars that year with the bar across the bottom – red for the A.L. and teal-ish blue for the N.L. Anyhoo… here’s the November 27th post from last year, heaping some love on ole Freddie Lynn.)
Sheesh, Fred Lynn. Man didn’t even warrant his OWN baseball card in 1975, and yet he went on to be the Rookie of the Year AND the A.L. MVP. What exactly did Terry Whitfield do? And Eddie Armbrister? Other than serving as an excellent George Foster decoy, Ed Armbrister was useless.
On this day in 1975, Lynn was named the MVP of the American League, making him, to that point, the only rookie ever to win the award. In my book, he’s still the only man to do it – Ichiro ostensibly did it in 2001, but he was a 27-year-old seasoned professional at the time.
Just as an aside, Lynn has a few other “only”s on his resume as well – he’s the only man to win the ALCS MVP as a member of the losing team (with the Angels in 1982) and the only man ever to hit a grand slam in the All-Star Game (1983). He’s also the only man, with his fellow outfield-mate and borderline Hall-of-Famer Jim Rice, to ever make me even think about rooting for the Red Sox. Lame though it is, I think I deserve a pass on that, because I was young and impressionable, and his 1977 All-Star card was stupid freaky dope.
The latest issue of The New York Review of Books (yes, yes, we here at No Mas read the NYRB… we have do have lives you know) reveals two rather disturbing facts from the world of sports in its opening two articles.
The first fact is the first of what promises to be many disturbing pieces of news regarding the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. In Dai Qing’s article “Thirsty Dragon at the Olympics” she reveals a China trapped in a fresh-water crisis that is the result of over-population and short-sighted agricultural planning during the Great Leap Forward of the 1950′s, when a relentless project of nationwide river-damming led to, as she calls it, an “ongoing ecological disaster.”
Today the farmers outside of Beijing barely subsist on small water allocations and state welfare. Meanwhile, she writes, the Olympic powers-that-be
“… are celebrating the construction of the ultimate ‘water follies’ which will be ready in time for the Olympic year. These include the vast lake that will surround the titanium, egg-shaped National Grand Theater next to the Great Hall of the People, just off Tiananmen Square, as well as the largest fountain in the world at the Shunyi ‘Water Heaven.’ The Shunyi water park has been built on the dried-out remains of the Chaobai River – no irony intended…”
Water Heaven? The Water Follies? Merely in these bizarre names for their attractions, it seems that the Chinese authorities are revealing the extent of their perfidy by fetishizing the false abundance of a resource the Western World all too greedily takes for granted. Evidently, for the duration of the Games special pipes will bring potable water to the taps of Beijing for the first time ever. This is a luxury that will cease immediately after the Closing Ceremony. The entire production truly will be a mirage.
Right then… wrapping up this cheerful bit of reading, stomach slightly nauseous, palms on the clammy side, one turns the page and comes upon an article by Frederick Crews called “Talking Back to Prozac.” This piece is about the insidious ways in which drug companies are going about creating a need for their drugs by fostering a sense in the media that certain natural personality traits – “shyness” for instance – are actually treatable “conditions.” To illustrate this thesis, Crews begins with an example from a 2002 Oprah Winfrey show (oh dear Oprah… the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems) when the big O’s guest was none other than the King of Weed himself, Ricky Williams. Crews writes:
Williams was there to confess that he suffered from painful and chronic shyness. Oprah and her audience were, of course, sympathetic. If Williams, who had been anything but shy on the football field, was in private a wilting violet, how many anonymous citizens would say the same if they could only overcome their inhibition long enough to do so?
Well, we learn, surprisingly enough Williams was paid for his appearance on Oprah by Glaxo-SmithKline, makers of the anti-depressant Paxil. He was not paid to shill for Paxil on the program, however, and he never once mentioned the drug. No, at the time he was only paid to go on the show and tell his story as a sufferer of chronic shyness. Only later did he appear in a Paxil press release, with a caption beneath his photograph reading, “As someone who has suffered from social anxiety disorder, I am so happy that new treatment options, like Paxil CR, are available today to help people with this condition.
Ah, the New York Review of Books. There’s just nothing like it really to make the true sports fan, and anyone for that matter, want to go jump off the Bay Bridge.
“Eagles over New England. Revenge is mine saith The Large.” – Large
I really believed. I thought we had Miami/Bears on our hands, and that the unlikely Marino stand-in was a ballsy backup by the name of A.J. (Soprano) Feeley. Right down to that godforsaken interception in the end zone, the sight of which entered my ribcage like a cold steel blade, I believed that the Iggles were going to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of their sullen mediocrity and enter the annals of permanent highlight posterity with a single heroic effort. How often do you see references back to that Miami/Bears Monday Night game in ’85? Marino to Moore! Marino to Duper! Marino to Clayton! How can this be happening? Every season, as soon as someone goes 3-0, they trot that thing out for a nice little V/O package in the pre-game. Now, I thought, we’ve joined the club, and no matter what happens, we ruined these smug bastards’ shot at immortality and they’ll remember this game for the rest of their perfect, Super Bowl ring-laden, supermodel-banging lives.
No Masians, I harbor hate in my heart. I am not the cheeriest of lads in the first place, but last night, I felt murderous. I felt like if I suddenly found myself in the presence of Herr Brady or that twinkle-toed dwarf Wes Welker, if either of them happened to stop by my place after the game for a little late-night hang, well, shit would very quickly turn all Saw II. I would smile in their faces and ply them with liquor and carbohydrate-rich snacks and then make for the kitchen knives and then when they started to pass out from all the heavy pastries and the mickey I’d slipped them in their whiskey I’d stab the shit out of them right there on the rug and then make a martini with their readily flowing blood and drink it in front of them while their pleas for human mercy filled the air and sounded to me like sweet music, like a gentle wind, like the laughter of innocent children playing tag in the sunshine by a burbling meadow brook.
I’ve often said here on No Mas that one way that you know an athlete is truly great is when you’ve rooted against him and hated him so damn much you could hardly stand it. Roger Staubach and Tony Dorsett, Steve Garvey, McHale, Bird and Ainge, Paul Molitor and Joe Carter… these are the V.I.P. members of that elite club of assholes that at one time or another I have fantasized about killing and thus have no choice but to bitterly acknowledge their undisputed greatness. Terrible Tom Brady already was knocking on the door of that club before last night – today he is a full-fledged member in good standing.
I know what you’re thinking – year-end boxing awards? But, but… what if Hatton beats Floyd? Wouldn’t that be upset of the year? And what if… what if Mayorga and Vargas both knock each other out simultaneously? Wouldn’t that qualify as… something of the year?
Yes, it’s all true. It’s a little early for the year-end boxing awards, but hey, Franchise over at Jarry Park wanted to trump the competition, so I dutifully complied with an interview. Think I did a damn good job too, if I do say so myself, and I’ve got a few surprises up my sleeve, so ch-ch-ch-check it out.
Obviously, I’m a happy man today – Jimmy Rollins winning the MVP brings back a little of the overall Philly-baseball good vibrations that disappeared for me after that miserable playoff series with the Rockies. I’m not going to get too deeply into the debate about whether Matt Holliday got robbed. He certainly had an MVP-caliber season, and it’s tough not to be influenced by what a monster he was in the postseason, which of course does not figure in the voting at all. Aside from my overwhelming Philly bias, however, let me just say that I always enjoy the complete player being rewarded with the MVP votes, and on that score I also find the Rollins victory satisfying.
It puts J. Roll in some elite company of N.L. MVP-winning shortstops. Over in the A.L., what with the glut of power-hitting shortstops in the last 20 years, the ARod’s and Tejadas and Ripkens and Younts, it’s been less of an anomaly, but in the N.L. the MVP shortstop has remained an unlikely proposition. The last one was 12 years ago, Barry Larkin, in a vote where it seemed that the absence of a dominant slugger in a credible ballpark (the Rockies had the runner-up slugger that year as well, Dante Bichette) allowed an all-around leader of a scrappy playoff team to steal the trophy.
Now for an amazing fact – prior to Larkin, you have to go back 33 years to find another shortstop winning the N.L. MVP, one of the most anomalous MVP awards in baseball history. In 1962, the Dodgers’ speedster at short, Maury Wills, stole 104 bases, 72 more than the N.L. base-stealing runner-up that year, his L.A. teammate Willie Davis. It’s one of those statistics that just boggles the mind, and it was enough to win him the award (narrowly) over Willie Mays, who put up .304, 141 and 49 numbers that season. You think Matt Holliday is bummed.
Two shortstops won three N.L. MVP’s in a row from 1958-1960. Pirates’ shortstop Dick Groat won an unlikely MVP in a close and controversial race over his teammate Don Hoak in 1960 (another teammate, Roberto Clemente, finished 8th and made some scathing remarks about the whole vote that almost got him run out Steel Town). And in ’58 and ’59, Mr. Let’s Play Two himself, Ernie Banks, brought back-to-back MVP’s to Wrigley.
Only one other shortstop remains who won the MVP in the National League, and he’s not exactly a household name. In fact, he has to be one of the worst players ever to win the award, which is not to say that he couldn’t play, but hell – when they call you the Most Valuable Player after a .267, 63 and 6 season, you just know there’s a war on. And so there was in 1944, when the St. Louis Cardinals’ SS Marty Marion won the vote over such luminaries as Bill Nicholson, who had a .287, 122 and 33 campaign, and Marion’s teammate Stan the Man Musial, who hit .347. Which sort of makes you wonder… exactly how many people did Marty have to blow to get all those MVP votes? Evidently he was a great fielder. But, you know, so was Mark Belanger.
(Today is the 25th anniversary of one of the great highlight reels in all of history. Enjoy – L)
November 20, 1982 – A last-second kickoff, about a dozen laterals, a most unlikely touchdown, and one sorryass bandgeek about to get decked. On its 25th anniversary, we here at No Mas invite you to relive the glory of The Play about 20 times.
Lot of big name fighters in action this weekend – Antonio Tarver, Vernon Forrest, Chavez Jr., Jorge Arce, even ole Chop Chop Corley, who fights tonight in Miami. None of these fights, however, include top-notch opponents, and so are mostly biding-their-time, cashing-that-check type fights, especially for Chavez, who fights tomorrow night on flippin PPV against Ray Sanchez, a fact that should give you some idea of what kind of pull the name “Chavez” has in the Mexican boxing universe.
Well, see, it all went down like this – Martin fought in a charity boxing match where Hearns happened to be a celebrity judge. After stomping his man mercilessly (poor form for a charity event, but hey, that’s how the Raw Dog DO), Martin threw an afterparty for himself back at his crib. Hearns showed up, disrespected the Raw Dog, and then proceeded to hit on Mardy-Mar’s lady, the stupid fineness highness that is Gina. Still juiced from his big KO, Martin takes offense. After slinging a few choice insults (“They call you the Hitman? Well I just got a call from Sugar Ray… he calls you the GET Hit Man!”) he challenges him to a fight, and it’s ON.
