What I Missed While I Was Gone…

By: dwil

Okay, I’ve been away fro nearly one month. In that time, much has happened in the world and the world of sports. In my first post back on the grind I decided to chronicle some of the events I missed:

Terence Moore wrote his final column for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (I know that was April 27, but what the hell, I never devoted a meaningful word to him). Good-bye Mr. Chips, Mr White Chocolate Chops, that is.

Gary Cartwright wrote a damning commentary in the June Texas Monthly on the decline of sports writing in Texas. He named a bunch of has-been, old school white writers and held them in the highest esteem at the expense of today’s sports journalists. However, Cartwright seemed to reserve special venom for Cedric Golden, a Black columnist for the Austin American-Statesman. Cartwright penned what amounted to a thinly-veiled racist rant.

So, my first “Fuck You” of my return to SOMM goes to Gary Cartwright… and besides Gary, I live in Austin, too.

Off the sports path, chi-town radio shock jock, Erich “Mancow” Mueller was subjected to a pale version of waterboarding and lasted just a few seconds. Previous to his experiment Mueller was one of the many neo-con shills who equated waterboarding with an afternoon in the pool.

Afterward, though, Mueller was profoundly shaken. He even showed up on Keith Olbermann’s nightly MSNBC show, “Countdown,” to apologize for his previous continued mischaracterization of waterboarding. Mueller even began to come around politically, as well, realizing how those people he once defended in the Bush administration were utter and complete liars.

But.

Gawker, the parent company of Deadspin - and Deadspin’s entertainment industry equivalent - decided that Mueller was lying about his being waterboarded. Additionally, when they were chastised on-air by Olberman they turned their pro Dick Cheney-ish venom on MSNBC and Olbermann.

Unfortunately for all involved, the asshats at Gawker missed the boat entirely. That Mueller was only subjected to a tame approximation of waterboarding and maintains that he has nightmares about the event, is more the point. Now, had the fools at Gawker checked out Vanity Fair’s Christopher Hitchens - another neo-con shill - receive a real waterboarding and completely freak out, they might reserved judgement on Mueller.

But in the fine tradition of their prime mover baby, Deadspin, they failed to do their homework and ultimately ended up appearing to defend waterboarding.

Does anyone still wonder why I despise this form of independent-Internet media?

Sammy Sosa was found to be one of the infamous 104 baseball players who tested positive for steroids in 2003. I only wondered how anyone could be surprised.

Meantime, Rusty Hardin announced that his pet legal project, Roger Clemens, did not test positive for steroids in that 2003 roundup. since it is almost a certainty that certain big-name  - read, White - players were tipped off to tests and since Roger the not-so artful dodger was almost certainly on the HGH tip, is anyone surprised by Hardin’s lates proclamation of Clemens’ innocence?

Former Fresno State linebacker Alphonso Bigelow gave his alma mater’s football program a $10 million donation. Bigelow started Nykel Bam International LLC. Nykel Bam is a company that, Bigelow says “facilitate[s] private commodities transactions.” How did Bigelow come upon these riches? allegedly he was at a party in Hong Kong after failing to broker a gold deal and a “mysterious English gentleman” approached him, listened to Bigelow’s story and decided to, ummmm, facilitate the success of Bigelow’s company. 

Now, with all that money floating around and the tons of gold in and around Hong Kong, the English man does not sound like much of a gentleman, especially since it is his people who make up Nykel Bam’s board of directors and therefore orchestrate the company’s moves.

Sounds like a beautiful money laundering scheme to me. I mean, I’m just saying…

On NBA Draft night, ESPN.com’s Jemele Hill tweeted her observations of the proceedings. some of her comments were better left unsaid - much better. she had very little to say about the players’ abilities, but much to say about their attire. Too bad she can’t go back in time and work with Bill O’Reilly on Inside Edition, or co-host Entertainment Tonight . Maybe she missed her calling, y’know?

-ricky rubio looks like balky from perfect strangers

-still waiting for the obligatory shot of the player girlfriend — the 1 who won’t make it to summer league.

-james harden came dressed as the sandman from showtime @ the apollo

 

-in addition to fulfilling his nba duties, james harden also will be selling bean pies & copies of final call

Hmmmmmm, love that ESPN expert hoops analysis.

Two students at Brown University call themselves the “Young Cons.” They are a conservative rap duo and ——– you guessed it ——— White.  

Please please please please get your filthy fucking hands out our pockets!

RIP to Vibe Magazine.

College athletes, former Arizona State quarterback Sam Keller (who transferred to Nebraska) and former Rutgers quarterback Ryan Hart in particular, are suing the NCAA because their likenesses are being used on EA sport games and they are receiving no compensation. Good luck fellas. I’ll be keping an eye on this story.

New York Jets linebacker Calvin Pace got busted for using a PED and will miss the first four weeks of the NFL season. Pace blamed his dirty test result on an “over-the-counter supplement.”

I’m still waiting for one of these cats to say, “yeah I did it and without steroids or HGH or IG-F I would not have been able to finish the season and our team might not have made the playoffs. The game is so violent that it is almost a must that an NFL player use something illegal, or use some legal substance illegally to make it through a full season.”

Okay, since no one else said it, I will (of course). Elena Dementieva has ingested and/or ingested something repeatedly to look as good as she did in her semifinal match against Serena Williams. Though Serena ultimately won the nearly three hour match 8-6 in the third set, it was Dementieva’s new-found strength and added speed and quickness that was the highlight of the match’ they were also out of the ordinary.

Dementieva will turn 28 in October of this year and has played on the WTA Tour for 11 years now. Because tennis has no offseason it is impossible for a player to make the kind of leap, athletically, that Dementieva did between - well, the Australian Open and Wimbledon, let alone from the French Open to Wimbledon. The Russian was as fast or faster, as quick or quicker, as strong or stronger than Serena. And no player, not even Venus, can make that claim.

So how did Elena Dementieva, at age 27 and already one of the fittest and hardest-practicing players on tour, gain that extra ability without taking four to six months off the tour to do so?

Your guess is as good as mine. But I will say the NHL is known to be the pro sports league of choice among PED distributors. And Dementieva’s boyfriend is Maxim Afinogenov of the Buffalo Sabres. 

I’m just sayin’….

Serena and Venus Williams are the dominant female tennis players of their era. Despite their stroke=producing liabilities they are tow of the greatest female tennis players to ever grace the courts. what they lack in technical ability they make up for with their wills. More than any women I have ever seen play, except for, perhaps, Chris Evert and Steffi Graf, these two women have the distinct ability to perform at their best during third sets of matches.

It is said that Martina Navratilova was a better athlete than the Williams sisters. Not. Today, Dementieva, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Jelena Jankovic, and the Williams’ are all far better athletes than was Martina. Even with today’s training Navratilova could not be the athlete these women are. The only players who were natively as fast as today’s stars are Graf, who the German Sports Federation hoped to turn into an Olympian sprinter, and former Australian champion, Evonne Goolagong. Unfortunately, few sports writers or few tennis players have perused film of Goolagong to understand just how, athletically, far ahead of her time she was.

Today, relatively “slow” players like Dinara Safina and Ana Ivanovic are far quicker around the court than “slow” players from late 20th century players like Lindsay Davenport and Mary Pierce. And Safina, Ivanovic Dementieva the Williams sisters are all 5′ 11″ or taller. Jankovic is 5′10″ and Kuznetsova is 5′9″ but weighs about 160 pounds of near-solid muscle. Of the former great, only Graf, at 5′11″ was built like today’s players and only Graf and Monica Seles (also 5″11″)  possessed the ability to hit serves consistently over 100 miles per hour, or hit the booming groundstrokes for which today’s players are known. Of the top 10 women’s players today, only Vera Zvonereva is 5′8″ tall or less.

And the young women on the rise like Viktoria Azarenka (20 yers old) Agnieszka Radwanska (20), and Carolina Wozniacki (19) are, besides all being in the top 15 in the world, are tall young women, 6′0″, 5′9″, 5′11″ respectively, though they are a few years from being physically filled out as women.

Venus and Serena are 29 and 27 respectively and have yet to come remotely close to losing a step. It could be said that because they were injured or dealing with family traumas for the better part of three years, might just continue to develop their games in the coming years. If true, the remainder of the women on the WTA Tour will have to wait awhile before they can compete for any other grand slam event other than the French Open, which is the bane of the Williams’ tennis existence. But if they set their minds to it and decide to play an extended clay court season, a Williams-Williams Roland Garros final is a very real possibility in the next two years.

For now though, we must revel in what Serena and Venus bring us as tennis players, because we may never see their likes again.

Finally, Shaq to Cleveland! Ron Artest to the Lakers! Hedo to Toronto! Sheed to the Celtics! Yao might be done! And the moves and jockeying for 2010 - and beyond - haven’t ended there.

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I’m sure I missed some events, but these are the happenings of the last 30 or so days that stand out for me.

And I am glad to be back.

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