Scoring at Home

Here’s “Sasha Vujacic”’s take on his breakout performance in game 3 of the Finals. You should be rooting for a Game 7, if only because it increases the chances of another “video blog” from The Machine. Mucho thanks to Lakers-fan.com for giving the world some sort of entertainment out of these playoffs.

[from Lakers-fan.com]

Dear Memory,

Please don’t let me forget what I saw today on TV. When time has passed, and the record books state simply that Tiger Woods won the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in a 19-hole playoff against Rocco Mediate, don’t let me forget just how far Tiger was pushed, and just how tough this win really was. Don’t let me forget that Tiger hadn’t played competitive golf in two months leading up to the Open, or that he played through the pain in his knee. Don’t let me forget all of the shots that made Tiger grimace in pain, or hobble, or wobble, or buckle. Don’t let me forget the miraculous shots Tiger made on Friday and Saturday to take the lead. The 60-foot eagle putt, the chip-in, the eagle on 18. Don’t let me forget the sight of Tiger bent over toward the beginning of his round on Sunday, appearing to be in so much pain that a mentally weaker player might have walked off the course. And don’t let me forget that he didn’t, and fought his way through the final round. Don’t let me forget that he still had to make a very tough 12-footer for birdie on 18 just to get in the playoff against Rocco.

But really, don’t let me forget about Rocco. Don’t let me forget his hat, covered in U.S. Open souvenir pins, or his players’ medallion, clipped to his sweater. Don’t let me forget that he stayed true to himself- always talking, joking, smiling, shrugging, flipping clubs in disbelief. Don’t let me forget that he gave everything he had on Sunday, and that he looked emotionally drained and physically spent after the round. That he said he knew Tiger would make his putt on 18, but his body language said he’d hoped Tiger would miss.

Don’t let me forget that Monday’s playoff appeared as if it were Tiger’s to win from the start. That Rocco said he was “running on fumes” prior to his round, and that the road appeared long and difficult when Tiger actually found the fairway on the first hole. Don’t let me forget that everything changed on the par 3 third, when Tiger plugged his tee shot in the front bunker and Rocco nearly aced it, leading to a two-shot swing. But don’t let me forget that Tiger was still Tiger, and came right back with a perfect approach and birdie on 6. Don’t let me forget Rocco’s approach that bounced off of two cart paths but still left him room to make a miraculous recovery. Don’t let me forget the short par putt that Rocco missed on 9, or the bogey on 10 that put him down three shots.

Don’t let me forget that the back nine on Monday was Rocco’s finest moment. Don’t let me forget that Rocco picked up two shots on 11 and 12, or that he birdied 13, 14, and 15. Don’t let me forget what happened on 15. That Rocco had just tied things up on 14, and then knocked his drive in the fairway. That Tiger drove his ball right into a bunker. That Rocco hit a great approach shot, and that Tiger hit an even better one. That up on the green Rocco said something to Tiger that actually made him laugh, which itself was quite an accomplishment given the circumstances. Don’t let me forget that just when Rocco could have let the round slip from his fingers, he made one of the greatest clutch putts I’ve seen. Don’t let me forget that Rocco held firm on 16 and 17, forcing Tiger to make a move on 18.

Don’t let me forget that one swing was the margin between winning and losing. Rocco pulled his drive into the bunker, and Tiger corked his right down the middle. Don’t let me forget that Rocco still had a 20-footer to win, but couldn’t get it to drop. Don’t let me forget that once the playoff went to sudden-death, it was finally, really over. Don’t let me forget that facing defeat, Rocco was still joking around with the rules officials, faking throwing his ball toward the green while he walked to the drop area on the 19th hole. Don’t let me forget that Tiger would have fought for 18 more holes to win the championship. Don’t let me forget that while he made the spectacular shots on Friday and Saturday, Tiger made all the crucial shots he needed on Sunday and Monday.

Don’t let me forget that Rocco pushed Tiger harder than anyone ever has, or that there is probably no other runner-up more deserving of winning the U.S. Open. While no one will forget that this might have been Tiger’s greatest win, please don’t let me forget that Rocco almost pulled off golf’s greatest win.

Congrats to the LSU baseball team, who are moving on to the College World Series in pursuit of the ‘07-08 football-baseball championship double. But we do have to, um, question the taste (to put it mildly) of this banner seen at the super regionals against UC-Irvine last weekend:

So for fellow Buckeye fans, what’s the response?

1. “I can’t believe we lost to those guys.” /hangs head

OR

2. “We may have lost the game, but at least we’re not those guys.” /shakes head in disbelief

[Friends of the Program via With Leather]

In an ugly-ass Game 3, Kobe was driving the car (36 points on 12-20 shooting, but only 11-18 from the line), and Sasha “The Machine” Vujacic was the gunner: 20 points on 7-10 shooting, 3-5 from downtown (and zero hesitation, as always). I loved the guy in Phil Jackson’s post-game press conference who asked what Phil thought of The Machine’s defense, since (to paraphrase) “everybody is already talking about” his offensive outburst. Hell yeah they are (right after they talk about how big and smelly that pile was that KG and Pierce laid). I’m hoping it was Elie Seckbach who asked (Elie is the bomb).

So in honor of The Machine’s breakout performance, we bring you the next installment of “his” Video Blog from Lakers-Fan.com (even though it’s from the Spurs series). We wait with baited breath for the Game 3 Video Blog…

(video from lakers-fan.com)

Congrats to Ken Griffey, Jr. upon hitting his 600th home run on Monday. Growing up in the time I did, I should have been a bigger Griffey fan than I was. And growing up in the place I did, I should have been a bigger Reds fan than I was. And reading these great Griffey anecdotes from the great Joe Posnanski reminded me of both facts, and how sentimental baseball can make you.

Game 1 of the NBA Finals is tonight, so I thought I’d spit out some Finals-related links to get you ready:

• Chris Ballard’s profile of Kobe from the June 2 SI. The bottom line- dude’s a killer, but can’t shut it off. My take is that he’ll never be MJ because he lacks some amount of smoothness. Put another way, Kobe can’t develop a proper gambling problem because he never leaves the court.
• I was having trouble figuring out why I just didn’t care about all this Lakers-Celtics 80s nostalgia, and then The Onion nailed it.
• This is why people don’t like Boston fans (or at least a certain segment of Boston fans)- they’re always trying to convince you why should root for their team. Just root for your damn team, and leave your insecurities out of it. I’ll make up my own mind, thanks.
• Finals non sequitur: a blog chats with Chuck Klosterman about the finals (I think) (via Deadspin).
• Nerd alert: Euros in Finals + Research on racially biased refs = Slate piece.

Just check out this story about an 8-year-old little leaguer in Kentucky who plays with one leg (also make sure you catch his soccer and football exploits). And don’t miss the video on the sidebar- just amazing. (via Deadspin)

I’ve never really been into combat sports (boxing, MMA, wrestling, etc.). I don’t have anything against these sports per se, but they’ve never really been my thing. It’s probably because I never watched them growing up (although Mailer’s “The Death of Benny Paret” was one of my favorite essays from HS).

It doesn’t help that I’ve largely lived in the post-Tyson boxing world, in the “era of no great champions.” There’s no nostalgia about boxing for people under 30; Mike Tyson is a video game and a freak to young people, even if the real Iron Mike is smarter and more complex than people think. Lennox Lewis didn’t really draw Americans to the sport; neither have the Klitschko brothers. And when the heavyweight division was left for dead several years ago, casual fans were told to check out guys in other divisions- Bernard Hopkins, Floyd Mayweather, Jr, Oscar De La Hoya. I tried that last year with Mayweather-De La Hoya. That snoozefest eliminated any remaining desire I had to watch boxing.

Meanwhile, America had already turned to MMA to replace their collective jones for hand-to-hand combat. While I was ignoring the death of boxing, people had already gotten into MMA. I never really missed it because I didn’t even know about it (again, the never watching it on TV thing). All I really knew about MMA was that “old guys” such as Mr. Tony and Wilbon didn’t like it because it was “too brutal,” and that young fight fans were flocking to the sport in droves. Also, I had the sense that Dana White, the head of UFC, wanted to be Vince McMahon, or at least couldn’t finish a sentence without swearing five times or threatening to kick someone’s ass. That’s about all I knew (and all I really still know) about MMA.

So, this weekend solved the “watching” problem of MMA for me. CBS was bringing MMA to the masses on network TV, featuring “Internet sensation” Kimbo Slice. Never mind that EliteXC is a lower-tier MMA league (? division?), and that Slice’s MMA skills have been questioned ever since he busted out on the YouTube scene- this event had all the buzz. However, it wasn’t CBS’s broadcast on Saturday that I caught, but rather the Versus broadcast of the (apparently much better) WEC on Sunday. And now I get it.

I was flipping channels last night, and landed on Versus just as Miguel Torres and Yoshiro Maeda were getting ready to get in the cage. I didn’t change the channel until the whole telecast was over. Those were two of the most riveting fights I’ve ever seen. I loved the Torres/Maeda East meets West dynamic, the whole “I’ve come all the way from Japan just to kick your ass” thing. That Torres looks even vaguely like the Karate Kid is also fun. That Torres’ forehead was cut basically right off the bat, and that by the end of the fight his blood was all over both competitors couldn’t have been done better in Hollywood. Honestly, my initial reaction to the blood was one of mild nausea- I’m a total wuss- that quickly turned into amazement that it wasn’t an issue for the competitors, the ref, or the announcers. In boxing, it seems a cut can threaten a whole match. Here, it just added to the visual spectacle. One thing that was clear was that neither competitor was going to back down, and that both were trying to knock the other guy out. It sure didn’t seem like these two guys were trying just to earn enough points to win. [Is there some technical reason for that? Is is a function of the length of the matches (5 5-minute rounds in championship bouts)? Or is scoring trickier than in boxing? Or is this just how MMA is- two guys trying to just kick the crap out of each other?] When Torres and Maeda had each other by the ankle at one point, in a seeming deadlock, it was a perfect metaphor for the first part of the match (and was adroitly pointed out by the announcers). The energy that both guys showed (especially Torres) was amazing.

With boxing, sometimes people get the sense that they could last some small amount of time in the ring with a real fighter. It’s the old “I could take a punch from Mike Tyson” bar argument, and even if you come down on the “no way in hell” side of the argument, you might at least be willing to entertain the debate. Watching these two MMArtists, who were each 3-5″ inches shorter and 80 pounds lighter than me, I figured I wouldn’t last 20 seconds in the cage.

Once Torres started working the right eye of Maeda, it was only a matter of time. I don’t know if it was the clarity of the HD broadcast, or that the announcers were really good at pointing stuff out, or that I was so emotionally into the fight by that point, or what it was, but watching Torres work the eye (and seeing the eye getting worse) was as fascinating as anything I’ve seen in boxing (although, again, that hasn’t been much). But that was just once facet of the great fight. I guess it would be akin to focusing on one drive in a great football game, or maybe just the offensive line play in that game- an interesting moment or aspect, but not one that should overshadow the greatness of the whole game.

At the end of that first match, I figured there was no way I was changing the channel. I had to keep watching to see if that match was an anomaly. I guess it wasn’t (at least on this night). The match between Urijah Faber and Jens Pulver seemed like another made-for-movie matchup. California pretty boy Faber, with his bulging bronzed muscles and inexplicably perfect teeth, battling appropriately-named ugly mutt Jens Pulver, with his pasty, lean physique and different-colored eyes. Faber was the defending WEC champ, and Pulver, four years his senior, was a former UFC champ and was undefeated at 145 pounds [Is there some juicy back story to why he's a former UFC fighter? In the script it says he was unceremoniously kicked out of UFC, only to destroy WEC and return to UFC to avenge his enemies, or something like that.]

I actually found this bout slightly less entertaining, although I’m pretty sure it’s because Torres/Maeda was the first one I’d seen, and maybe it had drained me emotionally already. The only thing I really remember from Faber/Pulver was the almost zombie-like resilience that Pulver had, taking blow after blow without falling, and after each flurry, grinning and egging Faber on. The combination (over I guess 30 or 45 seconds) that Faber laid on Pulver in the second (I think) round had enough power it for maybe three knockouts, but Pulver stood his ground. Faber seemed shocked that Pulver didn’t go down, and for a moment, it seemed like a turning point in the match. Pulver had taken the best from Faber and survived. For the remainder of the match, it even looked like Pulver might have a chance. He landed several shots that looked like they stunned Faber, and a couple sent him back a few steps. But ultimately, Faber just had too much energy for Pulver. When they would go to the mat, Pulver really looked like he was holding on, trying to catch a quick breather. But Faber would keep working, keep throwing forearms to Pulver’s head. It appeared that defending against the fury of Faber hadn’t left anything in the tank for Pulver to use to attack. If nothing else, the old-timer from UFC had given the champ a good fight.

So that’s it. The couple of brief things I’ve seen today about the WEC event said that they were two awesome fights, so I don’t feel like a total dumbass for my take on what I saw last night. Maybe the fact that I could “get it” without some expert telling me what was happening is exactly the thrill of MMA. Or maybe it’s about actually seeing two athletes at the highest level squaring off and really try to knock each other out. I don’t think I’m going to run out and order the next UFC PPV or spend all my time scouring the internet for the latest MMA news, but I do know one thing: based on what I saw last night, I think I get it now.

- Congrats to Kenny Perry, who won the ‘08 Memorial Tournament on Sunday.

- By all accounts Perry is one nice guy. But my favorite fun fact about Perry? His hometown of Franklin, Kentucky apparently didn’t have a public golf course, so he took out a $2.5 mil loan and built one. Rumor has it that he occasionally even works behind the counter. Cheers to that.

- The conditions were brutal at Muirfield Village all week, with 20-inch high rough and greens reading 20 on the stimpmeter*, leading many of the guys to piss and moan and threaten that players might start skipping Jack’s tournament because of the difficulty. Cry babies.

- Did he or didn’t he? Jack always waits by the 18th as the last few groups finish up, and usually says a few words and/or shakes some hands. When J.B. Holmes finished up, he walked right by Jack without saying anything. I think it’s basically a non-story, but I noticed it when I was watching and so did other people. I know you’re pissed at shooting 77 for the final round, but come on. I’ll give Holmes the benefit of the doubt, but if he was really trying to give Jack the cold shoulder, then that’s pretty weak.

- Memorial in photos: The Sand Trap has a nice gallery of photos from the weekend.

- The Tiger in the Room: You know Tiger’s the man when he’s not even playing right now and a profile of him is the golf article of the weekend.

- You didn’t play golf this weekend because you had a rec league softball tournament? Turns out that other sports might help your golf game. I’ve heard that Jack never played tennis because he feared it would throw off his golf game (too much right wrist?). It’s interesting that in the article it’s said that tennis players make good golfers by switching hands (i.e. right-handed tennis players golfing left-handed).

* not true

[UPDATED 6/4: Found an article summing up the players' complaining.]

Just came across this piece from Wired by Clive Thompson that asks why people don’t create new sports. Specifically, he writes about a game called Wiffle Hurling, invented by an MFA grad student at Rutgers in 2005. Take a look:

One of the sources of enjoyment of playing a new game/sport, according to Thompson, is that it allows the participant to explore the space of possible moves, to test what limits the rules place on the competitors. This is the same argument for what makes many video games enjoyable (and is one of the topics explored by Steven Johnson in Everything Bad is Good for You). While the “exploring the boundaries of the game” aspect of video games and new “sports” is an interesting topic, the reason people are drawn to the major sports is something completely different.

The reason that there are no new major team sports is that team sports provide a shared experience for people, and there are already enough sports to do that. People are drawn to the major team sports because other people are too. Kids watch or play a sport because their family does, or their friends do, or they can see it on TV. For most people, the dominant sports of a culture are enough (and they are popular enough that they generate the shared experience). Existing sports are just simple enough that many people can play them, yet are complex enough to allow for strategy, statistics, rules arguments, etc.

There’s nothing inherently better about any one established sport over another. Soccer is king in most of the world, yet has never become a major sport in America. Conversely, football is king in the US, but is a niche sport at best in the rest of the world. In some countries, rugby is the sport of choice. In others, cricket is. The dominant sport itself is inconsequential- I’m sure that the biggest football-loving, soccer-hating US fan would be the soccer hooligan had he grown up in Europe. Really, the sports we play are what they are because they simply reached the “tipping point” somewhere in history.

So really, the reason we don’t have new sports is because we don’t need them. Some people don’t want the same shared experience that the major sports provide. And that’s why they create kickball, roller derby, or Wiffle Hurling leagues. They still want some kind of shared experience, just on a smaller scale. I may be wrong, but I’d venture to say that if Wiffle Hurling really caught on, it wouldn’t be cool anymore.

(link via Kottke.org)