John Protevi's Blog

Dave Zirin on leaked documents on losing but profitable baseball teams which still demand public subsidies for stadiums

Read it here

Also, check out Field of Schemes.com for continuing coverage.

You stay classy, Dan Gilbert, billionaire owner of Quicken Loans, and Cleveland's vox populi

Dan Gilbert is trying to moralize a business decision, that is, capitalize on the desperation of the Cleveland community via their emotional commitment to a sports figure. That's bad for Cleveland and it's bad for sports, though I didn't see him complaining when that love for James increased the value of the franchise that Saint Dan Gilbert bought (after James was on board mind you) by hundreds of millions of dollars. He can cry me a river. You stay classy, Dan Gilbert.

What this comes down to is a billionaire financial whiz posing as the vox populi. A break, please give me. What do the people of Cleveland deserve? Relief from decades of de-industrialization in the form of good schools, good health care, good housing, good libraries, good parks, good jobs, etc. They also deserve people to see through Dan Gilbert's trying to speak for "the community" and to examine closely the role that the financialization of the US economy played in the destruction of Cleveland. Owner of Quicken Loans cares about the Cleveland community? He's made billions on refinancing of mortgages which was a major means by which the vast majority of people whose wages stagnated over the last thirty years (see "de-industrializaton" above) have cashed out the equity in their houses. I say Dan Gilbert and his financializing vampire industry can KMRIA, and he can do it twice for trying to speak for "the community" from whose wage stagnation he's benefited to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Sports as culture

A number of years ago I had a blog discussion with someone (read the linked thread if you want the name) whom I took to be claiming that a deep knowledge of classical European music was a necessary condition of being in his terms "reasonably cultured." I disagreed, saying that while it may be a sufficient condition, claiming it was necessary was sheer chauvinism. I then claimed that you could take a deep knowledge of sports as "cultural literacy" and thus as a sufficient condition for being "reasonably cultured." To counter his boast that he could propose a quiz about classical music that would stump us philistines, I proposed a quiz about sports: 

1. Who was better, John Smith or Dan Gable? Why? (Bonus points, who was the only man to defeat Gable in NCAA competiton, and what style did he use?)

2. What was “total football”? What part did the training style of Ajax play in its development? [2010 addition: was it really that revolutionary, compared to the Hungary teams of the 1950s?]

3. Who developed the “triangle offense”? What was its original name? Which one is more descriptive?

4. Said Aouita, Noureddine Morceli or Hicham El Guerrouj? Henry Rono or Haile Gebrselassie? Why?

5. What was the great tragedy of Evelyn Ashford’s career?

My interlocutor claimed I was asking about sports trivia. But I wasn't, I was asking about sports as culture. The key part of the argument went like this: 

I don’t know much of anything about classical music. I would explain this by saying there is only so much time in one’s life, and that I concentrated on sports / physical activity: doing it, watching it, reading about it, and thinking about it. And it rankles me to have someone say that a lifelong involvement with sports is not a “reasonably cultured” thing to do, and I think many of the “reasonably cultured” among the ancient Greeks would agree with me. So all I’m saying is that while a knowledge of classical music is a sufficient condition of reasonable culture, it is not a necessary condition. There are many areas of human endeavor worth thinking about, and since we’re finite, we can’t all learn about all of them in depth. The point is that it’s not so much the traditional prestige of the area that counts, but the quality of the engagement with it that counts. 

So, for instance, if we really wanted to discuss the tragedy of Evelyn Ashford’s career, it would take us to the probable use of steroids in 1988 by Florence Griffith-Joyner, a use that robbed EA of a second gold at 100m. But that takes us to the Cold War, the East Germans, images of femininity among Af-Am women athletes (images that are deeply intertwined with many strands in American history), and a whole bunch of other stuff that is not trivial in the least. If I asked you what was EA’s time in Seoul, that would be trivia. But that’s not what I asked for.

Unfortunately, my interlocutor quit the thread, never responding to this. In any case, any suggestions for items that might go to a quiz on baseline sports culture knowledge? Here's a World Cup proposal: 

Discuss the 1974 WC final match: Dutch hubris, German grit, or both? 

"You ain't got it like I got it"

Probably my favorite commercial of the past few years:

I have seen a lot of basketball in my time

but this Boston - Chicago series is quite possibly the best, most competitive, craziest one I've ever seen. One last second regulation game, two single overtime games, a double overtime game, and then tonight's triple overtime game was just silly it was so good. Clutch shot after clutch shot. Joachim Noah stealing the ball and driving the length of the court for the dunk! Crazy good!

OK, maybe not as crazy as this sequence to send an NBA Finals (!) game into triple-overtime, but still!

 

Great Basketball Announcing, Part II: Michael Jordan, "a spectacular move!"

This is a very well-known call, of one of the most famous moves in NBA history.

Great Basketball Announcing, Part I: "LeBron James, with no regard for human life!"

Basketball has been the occasion for some great calls too. I love the call on this LeBron James dunk.

Great race announcing, Part III: Secretariat 1973 Belmont. "He is moving like a tremendous machine!"

This is almost cheating, as it's probably the most famous racing call of all time. I don't know why, but it's very emotional for me when he says "He is moving like a tremendous machine!" Maybe it's the strange mixing of categories as we tend to anthropomorphize race horses, and then the "machine" remark pops up. Anyway, here's the call:

Great race announcing, Part II: Steve Prefontaine, 1972 Olympics 5000

I'm not sure whether it's the greatness of the race, but it's a good call in its own right: "Gahmoudi is bankrupt, and so is Prefontaine!" and "Prefontaine dies in the last strides" are both great.

Great race announcing, Part I: Alberto Juantorena, el Caballo

I'm a sucker for great race announcing. Here's a nice understated call, in French, of the great Alberto Juantorena winning the 400 and 800 at the Montreal Olympic Games of 1976.

The 400 / 800 double is much more impressive than the 200 / 400 double, which has been done three times in the past 25 years: Valerie Briscoe-Hooks in 1984 (albeit a boycotted Games), Michael Johnson in 1996, and Marie-José Pérec, la Gazelle, also in 1996.

Here's a much more excited call, in English, more like a horse race, of the Montreal 800. "The big Cuban goes through, the little American second, the giant Belgian third!"