This isn't a sports post, but I have posted anything in 11 days and it's the best I've got.
This video is simply amazing.
Apparently 2 guys in England bought a lion cub named Christian. The lion quickly got too big and they decided to have him set free in Africa. They went to visit him a year later and not only did the lion remember them, he jumped all over them and gave them hugs. It's pretty much what you'd expect your cat to do if it was 50 times bigger.
Here's a longer version of the reunion (with narration):
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Double Post
Like I said in my last post, I'm traveling. I finally have internet access and some free time, so I'm making up for the dry spell.
I don't know if anyone saw the UVA-Richmond football game on Saturday. It was not easy to see since it was on ESPNU. UVA played like crap and barely won. But that wasn't important to me. What I was excited about were the uniforms. UVA went retro to honor the 1989 ACC championship team and wore the classic orange jerseys with white helmets. This brought back fond memories of my childhood, back when UVA was good and I thought college football players were the coolest people on Earth. My all time favorite player was Herman Moore who played from 1989-1991, and my favorite card of his was a 1991 Fleer Ultra card where he was wearing that uniform.
Also, the UVA band was wearing what I can only describe as orange and blue Super Mario Brothers costumes. They were wearing orange shirts and what appeared to be blue overalls. If they had big mustaches and bowler hats the outfit would have been complete. I can't find a picture anywhere, but if anyone out there reading this can find a picture, please send it to me!
I don't know if anyone saw the UVA-Richmond football game on Saturday. It was not easy to see since it was on ESPNU. UVA played like crap and barely won. But that wasn't important to me. What I was excited about were the uniforms. UVA went retro to honor the 1989 ACC championship team and wore the classic orange jerseys with white helmets. This brought back fond memories of my childhood, back when UVA was good and I thought college football players were the coolest people on Earth. My all time favorite player was Herman Moore who played from 1989-1991, and my favorite card of his was a 1991 Fleer Ultra card where he was wearing that uniform.
Also, the UVA band was wearing what I can only describe as orange and blue Super Mario Brothers costumes. They were wearing orange shirts and what appeared to be blue overalls. If they had big mustaches and bowler hats the outfit would have been complete. I can't find a picture anywhere, but if anyone out there reading this can find a picture, please send it to me!
Every Man's Fantasy
Note to readers: the Artist and I apologize for not having posted much recently. The artist just started graduate school and I have been traveling the last 2 weeks. Hopefully there will be more posts to come.
This week represents the culmination of a dream I've been building for about 8 years...my wife got her own fantasy football team.
For the last 5 or 6 years I have run a fantasy football league amongst the astronomers at my institution. Amazingly, we've kept essentially the same participants the entire time, despite people graduating and moving all around the world. A few years ago I convinced one of my wife's (girl) friends to play with us, and she in turn got my wife to be her co-owner.
What started out as a joke quickly turned into an obsession. They were soon doing tons of research, asking me and the other girl's boyfriend for advice, and had even bought Yahoo's instant scoring access ($10/year). They got trounced their first year, but came back with a vengeance last year and dominated the league thanks to the lethal combination of Ladanian Tomlinson, Tom Brady, and Maurice Jones-Drew.
One of the fun things about playing with the same people is that we develop our own loyalties to players who have been good to us. My wife and her friend have had Maurice Jones-Drew since their first year, so when I drafted him this year with the first pick of the second round they just about killed me. But they were able to handle it because they had TOM BRADY. He's everything two girls could want in a QB: good looking, awesome stats, and ultra durable.
You undoubtedly know what happened on Sunday: Brady blew out his knee in the first quarter of the first game of the season. When my wife found out she was furious. I can only imagine what happened when her co-owner found out; she once cried when Randy Moss didn't get a single catch in the second half of a Monday Night Football game because if he had gotten only 9 yards she would have won the week!
By Sunday night they were already beginning to think about tanking the rest of the season to ensure they would get the first pick in next year's draft (we set the draft order based on the previous year's standings). By Monday, they had decided that the best course of action was to start another league with only four people (I was not invited) so that they could all have awesome players. So, tomorrow night at 8:00, my wife will be drafting her second team this season, and her first as sole owner. It appears I've created a fantasy football junky!
This week represents the culmination of a dream I've been building for about 8 years...my wife got her own fantasy football team.
For the last 5 or 6 years I have run a fantasy football league amongst the astronomers at my institution. Amazingly, we've kept essentially the same participants the entire time, despite people graduating and moving all around the world. A few years ago I convinced one of my wife's (girl) friends to play with us, and she in turn got my wife to be her co-owner.
What started out as a joke quickly turned into an obsession. They were soon doing tons of research, asking me and the other girl's boyfriend for advice, and had even bought Yahoo's instant scoring access ($10/year). They got trounced their first year, but came back with a vengeance last year and dominated the league thanks to the lethal combination of Ladanian Tomlinson, Tom Brady, and Maurice Jones-Drew.
One of the fun things about playing with the same people is that we develop our own loyalties to players who have been good to us. My wife and her friend have had Maurice Jones-Drew since their first year, so when I drafted him this year with the first pick of the second round they just about killed me. But they were able to handle it because they had TOM BRADY. He's everything two girls could want in a QB: good looking, awesome stats, and ultra durable.
You undoubtedly know what happened on Sunday: Brady blew out his knee in the first quarter of the first game of the season. When my wife found out she was furious. I can only imagine what happened when her co-owner found out; she once cried when Randy Moss didn't get a single catch in the second half of a Monday Night Football game because if he had gotten only 9 yards she would have won the week!
By Sunday night they were already beginning to think about tanking the rest of the season to ensure they would get the first pick in next year's draft (we set the draft order based on the previous year's standings). By Monday, they had decided that the best course of action was to start another league with only four people (I was not invited) so that they could all have awesome players. So, tomorrow night at 8:00, my wife will be drafting her second team this season, and her first as sole owner. It appears I've created a fantasy football junky!
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Pirates vs. Boras
I don't know if you saw this, but Pedro Alvarez the #2 pick in the baseball draft has refused to sign the contract he apparently agreed to with the Pittsburgh Pirates. The whole thing is a he said-she said kind of affair, but when you read further into it, there are some major implications regarding MLB's granting of the two parties an extension past the deadline which has resulted in the MLB player's union filing a grievance and could possibly end up voiding the contract of Eric Hosmer who was the #3 pick in the draft by the Kansas City Royals. Furthermore, there are rumblings that the whole cause of the case is Scott Boras' ego which can't handle not having negotiated the most valuable contract in the draft (#5 pick Buster Posey got $200,000 more than Alvarez). It's an interesting case, and one I have trouble picking sides on.
But I'm not going to go into that. Instead, this gives me a good reason to rail on the MLB draft. You probably don't know too much of the specifics of the MLB draft process because up until this year, MLB has refused to let there be any live coverage of it, instead conducting it by conference call among the 30 teams. As a result, they've missed years of free advertising from networks like ESPN who, if they televised it, would likely subject us to weeks on end of talk leading up to the draft, and making the top players household names. Instead even hard core baseball fans like me have to double check the article we just read to remind ourselves what the #3 pick's name is. I'm not a big NBA fan, but I can probably name the #3 pick from nearly every NBA draft from the last 15 years, and everyone knows who the #3 pick in the 1984 draft was! Terrible marketing: point #1 against MLB.
Point #2: Teams can't trade draft picks. In every other major American sport, teams can trade their draft picks, both before and after the draft. Not so for MLB. Not only can they not trade draft picks before the draft, they can't trade the players after the draft until they've signed and played one full season. This is often the cause of the "player to be named later" in baseball trades. Teams can't legally trade recent draft picks until after the season, so they agree to a deal, but leave the draft pick to be traded after the season as the player to be named later.
Point #3: The unenforced slotting system. MLB has "rules" (I use the term loosely) which instruct teams how much they should pay the player drafted #1, #2, etc... This is similar to the NBA where, to curb escalating salaries, teams have very little wiggle room for how much they can pay a player. Unlike the NBA, however, there is no enforcement of the rule. The vast majority of major league teams follow it, and if a player is perceived to be likely to demand more than his slot, most teams will pass on him for fear of being unable to sign him. However, there are a few teams (Yankees, Red Sox, and Tigers) who have been willing to draft these players and pay them how much they're asking for. MLB's response is to give them a stern phone call and say "don't do that again".
As a result of #3, couple with #2, the amateur baseball players who are widely acknowledged to be the best in the draft often don't go in the first few picks. In some cases, they don't even go in the first round! Can you imagine LeBron James not getting picked until the second round because teams knew they couldn't sign him? It's ludicrous. But by encouraging teams to follow a slotting system for how much they pay, but then allowing teams to exceed it when they want to while simultaneously disallowing teams to trade the picks, MLB's rules allow wealthy teams to collect massive amounts of talent at the expense of poor/rule following teams. As a result, the Nationals, and quite possibly the Pirates lost their first round draft pick this year. It's not just the teams that pay-the players who are drafted and can't come to an agreement have to wait until next year's draft and do it all over again!
My solution: allow teams to trade draft picks, and enforce a system for draft salaries. Personally I am all for players earning as much as they can because baseball is a for profit business and the money is either going to go to the players or to the already rich owners. I'd rather it go to the poorer (relatively) players who I'm paying money to watch play. However, I really just want to see a set of rules that makes it a fair system for all 30 teams. Either allow players to sign for as much as they can get, or take away all bargaining power and assign values to the draft positions. Regardless of the system, teams will be able to take the best player available. If they have a fixed cost, the team signs the player and he'll quickly be able to join the farm system and begin his career. If they are allowed to sign for however much they want, and it's evident that the player is asking for more than the team is willing to pay, the pick still retains value for the team because he can now be traded.
The essence of sports is their egalitarian nature, that any person or team can win it all given the right circumstances. The way the baseball draft is set up, this is not the case. Certain teams, either because they are wealthier or because they are willing to flaunt the rules, have an unfair advantage. If baseball wants to regain it's perch as the most popular sport in America, it should start by making the draft fair for everyone.
But I'm not going to go into that. Instead, this gives me a good reason to rail on the MLB draft. You probably don't know too much of the specifics of the MLB draft process because up until this year, MLB has refused to let there be any live coverage of it, instead conducting it by conference call among the 30 teams. As a result, they've missed years of free advertising from networks like ESPN who, if they televised it, would likely subject us to weeks on end of talk leading up to the draft, and making the top players household names. Instead even hard core baseball fans like me have to double check the article we just read to remind ourselves what the #3 pick's name is. I'm not a big NBA fan, but I can probably name the #3 pick from nearly every NBA draft from the last 15 years, and everyone knows who the #3 pick in the 1984 draft was! Terrible marketing: point #1 against MLB.
Point #2: Teams can't trade draft picks. In every other major American sport, teams can trade their draft picks, both before and after the draft. Not so for MLB. Not only can they not trade draft picks before the draft, they can't trade the players after the draft until they've signed and played one full season. This is often the cause of the "player to be named later" in baseball trades. Teams can't legally trade recent draft picks until after the season, so they agree to a deal, but leave the draft pick to be traded after the season as the player to be named later.
Point #3: The unenforced slotting system. MLB has "rules" (I use the term loosely) which instruct teams how much they should pay the player drafted #1, #2, etc... This is similar to the NBA where, to curb escalating salaries, teams have very little wiggle room for how much they can pay a player. Unlike the NBA, however, there is no enforcement of the rule. The vast majority of major league teams follow it, and if a player is perceived to be likely to demand more than his slot, most teams will pass on him for fear of being unable to sign him. However, there are a few teams (Yankees, Red Sox, and Tigers) who have been willing to draft these players and pay them how much they're asking for. MLB's response is to give them a stern phone call and say "don't do that again".
As a result of #3, couple with #2, the amateur baseball players who are widely acknowledged to be the best in the draft often don't go in the first few picks. In some cases, they don't even go in the first round! Can you imagine LeBron James not getting picked until the second round because teams knew they couldn't sign him? It's ludicrous. But by encouraging teams to follow a slotting system for how much they pay, but then allowing teams to exceed it when they want to while simultaneously disallowing teams to trade the picks, MLB's rules allow wealthy teams to collect massive amounts of talent at the expense of poor/rule following teams. As a result, the Nationals, and quite possibly the Pirates lost their first round draft pick this year. It's not just the teams that pay-the players who are drafted and can't come to an agreement have to wait until next year's draft and do it all over again!
My solution: allow teams to trade draft picks, and enforce a system for draft salaries. Personally I am all for players earning as much as they can because baseball is a for profit business and the money is either going to go to the players or to the already rich owners. I'd rather it go to the poorer (relatively) players who I'm paying money to watch play. However, I really just want to see a set of rules that makes it a fair system for all 30 teams. Either allow players to sign for as much as they can get, or take away all bargaining power and assign values to the draft positions. Regardless of the system, teams will be able to take the best player available. If they have a fixed cost, the team signs the player and he'll quickly be able to join the farm system and begin his career. If they are allowed to sign for however much they want, and it's evident that the player is asking for more than the team is willing to pay, the pick still retains value for the team because he can now be traded.
The essence of sports is their egalitarian nature, that any person or team can win it all given the right circumstances. The way the baseball draft is set up, this is not the case. Certain teams, either because they are wealthier or because they are willing to flaunt the rules, have an unfair advantage. If baseball wants to regain it's perch as the most popular sport in America, it should start by making the draft fair for everyone.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
And the winner is...Jamaica?
You can't have an Olympics without talk of medal count, and while on some levels it's an interesting story to watch unfold throughout a given Olympic Games, there's a fairly obvious problem with putting too much emphasis on which country wins the most medals, as only a select few well-populated countries are even in the running for this distinction.
So, as the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics concluded, I began thinking of what a more fair medal count might look like, and I came up with this: If the total medals a given country won were looked at in relation to its total population, who then would come out on top?
Here are the top five:
So, as the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics concluded, I began thinking of what a more fair medal count might look like, and I came up with this: If the total medals a given country won were looked at in relation to its total population, who then would come out on top?
Here are the top five:
- Jamaica (11 total medals won)
- Australia (46)
- Cuba (24)
- Norway (10)
- Belarus (19)
This wasn't the most scientific study ever conducted, but Jamaica won hands down. I arrived at my findings simply by taking the population of a given country and dividing it by the total number of medals won by that country. A country had to win at least 10 total medals to be considered. The top-5 might have been somewhat different had I looked at more countries (I looked at 23 total), but I don't have all the time in the world and thus had to draw the line somewhere.
Details and pinpoint accuracy notwithstanding, I thought the above findings were pretty interesting. And in case you were wondering: The U.S. finished 19th, which wasn't nearly as bad as China, who finished - you guessed it - dead last.
Whew!
I just watched the U.S. hang on to beat Spain for the gold medal in men's basketball. This was the first game I've watched for more than a few minutes, but from having read recaps of every other game, it didn't go quite like I expected. A few thoughts:
1. The announcers were fawning all over how Kobe Bryant won the game for the U.S. in the fourth quarter. My take is that Kobe put them in that position with his play in the third quarter. Once Spain got it close and the U.S. started getting nervous, Kobe started playing like he was on the Lakers. He started hogging possessions and forced several threes. Even though he made a few of those shots, the U.S. lost the beautiful rhythm they'd been in in the first half. They played much of the second half like an NBA team, with one guy dribbling and four guys watching. Similarly, Carmelo had forced a few bad threes, and him hurting his hand on the backboard ended up being a blessing. It forced Coach K to take him out and got Dwayne Wade back in.
2. Hats off to Spain. Pau Gasol is the only player who could have made the U.S. team, yet they played phenomenally as a team, and made guys like Rudy Fernandez and Juan Carlos Navarro look like the best players in the world. They did just what the announcers said they needed to do: hang around long enough to make the U.S. get nervous. I was hoping for another 37 point blowout, but the possibility of the U.S. losing sure made it compelling for 40 minutes.
3. With that said, the refs played a substantial roll in keeping the game close. Overall I thought they probably made nearly as many horrendous calls for each team. My big complaint was the inconsistency of calls. The whole first half they called ticky-tack fouls which quickly got Kobe and LeBron in foul trouble, and when the U.S. started to pull away in the middle of the second quarter they called fouls on so many possessions (both ways) that it got them out of rhythm and allowed Spain to creep back into it. Then, when everyone had gotten used to the idea that there would be a whistle for just touching your opponent, the refs basically stopped calling everything in the second half. Furthermore, I thought they let a ton of travels go (mostly for Spain), and I can't believe that the Spanish bench never got a technical. The refs must have warned them to back off the court and sit down at least 3 or 4 times, and on one occasion they even threw a towel on the court. With college or NBA refs, I suspect the game would have been much less close.
4. Ricky Rubio is going to be amazing. he's 17 and held his own against the best players in the world. When I heard he was 17 I figured he'd be eaten alive by Jason Kidd, Chris Paul, and Deron Williams. He will be unbelievable when he's 25.
5. Was it just me, or did Michael Redd look like Kanye West sitting on the bench all game?
6. Who do you think David Beckham was cheering for? He played in Spain for years, but currently lives and plays in the U.S. I'm thinking the U.S., but I never saw him react one way or the other. I suspect it was a Jordan/Tiger marketing thing where you remain as neutral as possible about any opinion so as to never alienate potential fans. Or maybe he doesn't know the rules. Who knows.
All in all, I was pleased to see the U.S. win, and enjoyed this team more than any U.S. Olympic team since the Dream Team in 1992. I was so glad to have players who genuinely wanted to play for their country. I openly cheered against the Starbury 2004 team, and really didn't care for the 2000 team (as an aside: I just looked at the 2000 roster. Can you believe that we won the Olympics with Vin Baker, Steve Smith, Antonio McDyess, and Allan Houston on the roster?). It was really fun to watch some of the best players in the world play together and actually play like a team. I hope we can continue to get this kind of commitment and effort in the coming years. I forget where I heard this, but someone talked about how the U.S. basketball team can become like the Brazilian soccer team, in that they are every countries second favorite team because of the way they play. I agree with that sentiment and hope that both Obama and McCain take note. I'm sick of the rest of the world hating our country.
1. The announcers were fawning all over how Kobe Bryant won the game for the U.S. in the fourth quarter. My take is that Kobe put them in that position with his play in the third quarter. Once Spain got it close and the U.S. started getting nervous, Kobe started playing like he was on the Lakers. He started hogging possessions and forced several threes. Even though he made a few of those shots, the U.S. lost the beautiful rhythm they'd been in in the first half. They played much of the second half like an NBA team, with one guy dribbling and four guys watching. Similarly, Carmelo had forced a few bad threes, and him hurting his hand on the backboard ended up being a blessing. It forced Coach K to take him out and got Dwayne Wade back in.
2. Hats off to Spain. Pau Gasol is the only player who could have made the U.S. team, yet they played phenomenally as a team, and made guys like Rudy Fernandez and Juan Carlos Navarro look like the best players in the world. They did just what the announcers said they needed to do: hang around long enough to make the U.S. get nervous. I was hoping for another 37 point blowout, but the possibility of the U.S. losing sure made it compelling for 40 minutes.
3. With that said, the refs played a substantial roll in keeping the game close. Overall I thought they probably made nearly as many horrendous calls for each team. My big complaint was the inconsistency of calls. The whole first half they called ticky-tack fouls which quickly got Kobe and LeBron in foul trouble, and when the U.S. started to pull away in the middle of the second quarter they called fouls on so many possessions (both ways) that it got them out of rhythm and allowed Spain to creep back into it. Then, when everyone had gotten used to the idea that there would be a whistle for just touching your opponent, the refs basically stopped calling everything in the second half. Furthermore, I thought they let a ton of travels go (mostly for Spain), and I can't believe that the Spanish bench never got a technical. The refs must have warned them to back off the court and sit down at least 3 or 4 times, and on one occasion they even threw a towel on the court. With college or NBA refs, I suspect the game would have been much less close.
4. Ricky Rubio is going to be amazing. he's 17 and held his own against the best players in the world. When I heard he was 17 I figured he'd be eaten alive by Jason Kidd, Chris Paul, and Deron Williams. He will be unbelievable when he's 25.
5. Was it just me, or did Michael Redd look like Kanye West sitting on the bench all game?
6. Who do you think David Beckham was cheering for? He played in Spain for years, but currently lives and plays in the U.S. I'm thinking the U.S., but I never saw him react one way or the other. I suspect it was a Jordan/Tiger marketing thing where you remain as neutral as possible about any opinion so as to never alienate potential fans. Or maybe he doesn't know the rules. Who knows.
All in all, I was pleased to see the U.S. win, and enjoyed this team more than any U.S. Olympic team since the Dream Team in 1992. I was so glad to have players who genuinely wanted to play for their country. I openly cheered against the Starbury 2004 team, and really didn't care for the 2000 team (as an aside: I just looked at the 2000 roster. Can you believe that we won the Olympics with Vin Baker, Steve Smith, Antonio McDyess, and Allan Houston on the roster?). It was really fun to watch some of the best players in the world play together and actually play like a team. I hope we can continue to get this kind of commitment and effort in the coming years. I forget where I heard this, but someone talked about how the U.S. basketball team can become like the Brazilian soccer team, in that they are every countries second favorite team because of the way they play. I agree with that sentiment and hope that both Obama and McCain take note. I'm sick of the rest of the world hating our country.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
A bit off color
...but I can't resist. So I'm not accused of pirating that image, if you think it's funny, please check out the artist's website. No, it wasn't done by The Artist.
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