Sports

All Cheer the SuperJews

Jerry Springer has a fill-in host on Air America Radio, a Colorado talk show host named Jay Marvin who's vastly more listenable than the mumbly panderer. Today, a caller told Marvin about a bit of sports trivia that floored me: A European soccer team goes by the monicker "the Jews," which inspires some horrible taunts by rival fans. I dug up the details for a post today on SportsFilter: Cheering on the SuperJews Wonder what it would be like if a sports team used a Jewish mascot? For years, fans ... (read more)

2005/08/09

El Prodigio de Rafael Palmeiro

A commenter on SportsFilter echoes the sentiment of a lot of baseball fans, describing Rafael Palmeiro as "very good for a long time, but never great." There are two reasons Palmeiro's Hall of Fame credentials should be absolutely beyond question. Most consecutive 100-RBI, 35-home run seasons in Major League history: Jimmie Fox 9 Rafael Palmeiro 9 Players with at least 3,000 hits and 500 home runs: HR RBI Hank Aaron 755 3,771 Willie Mays 660 3,283 Rafael Palmeiro 566 3,001 Eddie Murray 504 ... (read more)

2005/07/17

Simple Syndication in Communist China

While researching the skateboard jump over the Great Wall of China, I found RSS in an unusual place: The English language edition of People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, offers 18 RSS 2.0 newsfeeds. In addition to feeds on current events in news, business, sports, and other areas, the paper devotes feeds to party leaders such as Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. Outside observers of China often look to People's Daily for clues about the inner ... (read more)

2005/07/10

Non-Olympic Sports Test Medal

News to me: The World Games are an every-four-year event that features several dozen sports that haven't made it to the Summer Olympics yet, including fin swimming, korfball, sumo wrestling, and tug of war. This year's event begins July 14 in Duisburg, Germany. Nine of its competitions have become Olympic sports since the event was founded in 1980. Out of all of the obscure sports, the most unusual may be korfball, a co-ed sport in which players throw a soccer-like ball into an 11.5-foot high ... (read more)

2005/05/28

Mark Cuban's Getting Jobbed

I found a great Dallas Mavericks fan site that lists all future contractual obligations for the team, showing how much owner Mark Cuban has to pay for a few underperforming players: $7.9 million for Tariq Abdul-Wahad in 2006 $7.8 million for Shawn Bradley in 2008 $13.1 million for Erick Dampier in 2010 Cuban's surprisingly candid about this stuff on his weblog, so I sent him an e-mail inviting his comment on the strange basketkabalistic world of salary capology. As I told him, I don't see how ... (read more)

2005/05/27

Stevie Does Dallas

Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzi are best friends. While together in Dallas, they liked to hit dive bars to eat Tex-Mex food and knock back enough beers to produce photos like this, which I presume helps them reconstruct their activities after a blackout. I think they're holding hands for structural support. There ought to be a smoldering crater where the American Airlines Center in Dallas once stood, with a sign next to it that reads "Steve Nash was here." How do you back off Nash at the three ... (read more)

2005/05/21

To Dream the Impossible Dream

Lifetime to-do list: Write hands-on tutorial for beginning Java programmers who want to teach self language in no more than 21 days Successfully predict next pope's name End TV news segment with segueway back to anchors Be insulted in no less than five languages by total strangers Do more to help worthy charity Become a professionally ranked tennis player. My uncle Paul wanted to become John McEnroe as a teen, and we've disagreed for years over whether I could become ranked if I devoted myself ... (read more)

2005/04/28

Ouch: In Jacksonville Wednesday, Minnesota Vikings quarterback Daunte Culpepper spontaneously gave a paralyzed local athlete two diamond necklaces worth about $75,000 during an NFL awards ceremony Wednesday, then subsequently took them back. ... (read more)

2005/02/03

Linger, Oh Linger, Heffelfinger

The highlight of attending NFL Experience, the Super Bowl event near Jacksonville's Alltel Stadium, was seeing Hall of Fame exhibits on loan from Canton. Until I saw the Birth of Pro Football display, I didn't know the first pro player had the Dickensian name of Pudge Heffelfinger. A standout at Yale, in 1892, Heffelfinger earned $500 ($10,200 in today's dollars) to play one game as a ringer for the Allegheny Athletic Association, a cheat that wasn't confirmed until 70 years later. He was the ... (read more)

2005/01/31

Tony Kornheiser vs. Jacksonville

Tony Kornheiser wrote a column in the Washington Post ripping Jacksonville as a Hooters-loving, foul-smelling, remote city of doublewides that only got the Super Bowl because Tuscaloosa was booked: Jacksonville is where Pat Boone was born (sometime around the Martin Van Buren presidency), and where the Southern hair band .38 Special got together. Somehow it doesn't sound like hip-hop. It's more like I-Hop. As a seven-year resident, I'm more offended by Kornheiser's laziness than anything he ... (read more)

2005/01/28

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