I hate that kind of personal taunting. It's pointlessly nasty and it can ruin the actual game happening for other people there. I saw an ESPN special on Albert Belle that recounted how a bunch of racist jerks followed him around in his college playing days and shouted slurs at him. It gave me a context for his ridiculous temper, though it doesn't excuse it, of course. Later fans taunted him because of his alcoholism. That, to me, is pure assholery.
posted by pooch at 12:26 PM on January 11, 2006
Interesting. The NHL is taking a break during the Olympics, right? How long will it be? I was just reading in the Columbus paper today that Fedorov has been a huge help to the the Jackets' young Russian player Nikolai Zherdev. Fedorov said that he translates the coaches' instructions for Zherdev.
posted by pooch at 09:06 AM on December 14, 2005
Oh, that is sad that he's gone. He was a giant of Cleveland sports. I saw him in an interview this summer and he looked pretty spry. I didn't realize that he helped keep the Tribe in Cleveland, as this story indicates.
posted by pooch at 11:39 AM on October 18, 2005
I've never heard of this Baseball Chapel thing. I hate the idea of proselytizing in my sport. Yuck. Bad mix. I grew up Catholic, and my mother always told me that people picked on Jews because they were jealous of them, as they were the chosen people. I mentioned this to my Jewish friend and her response was this: "Sometimes we wish He'd chosen someone else." Though I've blocked out most of the Catholic doctrine I learned as a kid, I'm pretty sure we didn't spend much time talking about which non-Catholics were going to hell. We were more concerned about our own stays in purgatory and such.
posted by pooch at 09:31 AM on September 21, 2005
Good for him. I hope it helps him heal. It really is brave for him to talk about it, given the hyper-masculine context in which he works. It's also a reminder to those who think of molesters as the creepy guys lurking in playgrounds that molesters are usually family members or someone the child knows. Thanks for sharing your story, T, and good luck to you. I have a similar story but many, many hard feelings.
posted by pooch at 10:08 AM on September 20, 2005
Great honk, he is an awful writer. I didn't expect to be more annoyed by his writing than his TV appearances, since the TV stuff includes seeing his adam's apple and hearing his Shouty McYellerson rants, but I am. This could have been written by anyone. The piece goes off the rails when he mentions Vanderbilt. I had to read those swollen paragraphs a few times to get his point, and I'm bitter that those two minutes of my life are gone. And he's smugly comfortable shrugging off the "bad behavior" of OU players. What a giant ass. I think that until college players are straight-up paid, schools should at least try to emphasize academics, so good on you, Stoops.
posted by pooch at 09:13 AM on September 16, 2005
I'm not surprised, though I am embarrassed as a Columbus resident. There was a story in the paper yesterday about the giant mess the fans left after the Texas game - it included "five soiled pairs of underwear". The OSU president had to apologize to angry Texas fans who complained about their treatment at the game. She told them that OSU was trying to change the culture that caused such things. I don't want to be part of any culture that includes soiled underwear and death threats. That said, people who act like that are in the minority and are just using their fandom as an excuse to engage in toddler behavior. The fans I watched the game with were upset, but they didn't threaten to kill anyone.
posted by pooch at 08:51 AM on September 15, 2005
Hey, can someone who knows about tennis politics explain the Mary Pierce controversy to me? I was watching her match with Dementieva, and Mary Carillo was apoplectic about Pierce's gamesmanship and was grumbling about the women's game today and how Chris and Martina didn't play like this, etc. From what I can tell, Pierce took as many injury and bathroom timeouts as she could, and Carillo seemed to think that they were unnecessary.
posted by pooch at 10:16 AM on September 12, 2005
jojomfd1: Yeah, I understand why people were resentful of him and angry about the damage he did to the team. I just thought the reaction was extreme. I also didn't like the way OSU QB Steve Bellisari was wailed on by fans after his DUI a few years ago. This is why I'm only a casual college sports fan - I find it hard to overreact to the bad actions of unpaid kids as I do to those of well-paid adults.
posted by pooch at 04:11 PM on August 30, 2005
I wanted Clarett to succeed in some fashion, in part because I live in Columbus and the Buckeye Nation is exhausting me. The over-the-top bashing he took from the fans was unreal. You'd have thought that he was a serial rapist or murderer rather than an immature jerk with an inflated sense of his own worth who wanted to make some money. The local sports talk shows are full of schadenfreude since he was cut.
posted by pooch at 10:57 AM on August 30, 2005
As a Tribe fan, I'm glad Milton's gone from my team, because he did engage in assholery regularly. I think you're right about the name being a problem for him, yerfatma. Had he embraced it as the fabulous Coco Crisp did, things may have worked out differently for him. I did feel a bit sorry for him last year when he was blasted for throwing that bottle in the direction of the asshole fan. That incident was nothing compared to the horrible chair-throwing mess, yet Bradley was demonized for it. My sympathy was shortlived, though, because Milton made another dick move immediately thereafter.
posted by pooch at 12:16 PM on August 24, 2005
I'm all for dark humor, but this makes me queasy, esp. when he jokes about wife-beating being a good preparation for taking down quarterbacks. Also, why is the soliciting for oral sex guy included? That's an embarrassment, not a terrible crime. Sporting News had a piece a few issues ago featuring mini-interviews with players, and it really struck me how half-witted many of them were. Most of them cited incredibly stupid/lame pranks as the pinnacle of humor when asked about the team jokesters. I can't help but think that many NFLers stopped developing mentally and emotionally at 11, not coincidentally also the time that they began to be lauded as superior beings. It put me in mind of "Our Guys", an excellent book concerning the dangers that excessive adulation of athletes poses. This is part of what makes me unable to love football as I used to. The other part is the eternal suckage of my team.
posted by pooch at 09:38 AM on August 19, 2005
I think it's clear that Kenny Rogers' anger issues stem from sharing a name with Kenny Rogers, much like Michael Bolton in Office Space.
posted by pooch at 12:22 PM on July 19, 2005
Also if you look back at the indians they named their team in honor of a native american player. Gregy606, I love the Tribe too, but this probably isn't true. http://www.baseballreliquary.org/story_of_sockalexis.htm I hate Chief Wahoo. I love the Tribe. The tiny superstition/curse section of my brain is filled with a certainty that the Tribe lost the World Series in '95 and '97 because they didn't get rid of Chief Wahoo when they left the old stadium. Yes, I know that's nonsense.
posted by pooch at 03:50 PM on July 18, 2005
I just had to join so I could comment in this thread. I've been enjoying this site for awhile. I saw Nadia in person a few years ago, and she is absolutely beautiful. She turned my het-girl head. For some reason, she never looks as pretty on TV as she does in real life. Owlhouse, Nellie Kim was also a fox, but I'm not sure that she still is. Uh, I guess this is terribly shallow for a first comment.
posted by pooch at 12:31 PM on July 13, 2005
Sox reach deal for CF Crisp
As far as I can tell, nothing is finalized yet and the deal won't happen unless the Indians acquire a replacement outfielder. That may be my denial shining through, as I would hate like hell to see Coco go. I sure wouldn't say he was 3rd or 4th on the Tribe outfielder depth chart - he's second behind Grady Sizemore. He makes some sweet plays. He has been consistently underrated by Tribe management, and I'm not sure why. They offered him just a bit more than they offered Ben Broussard, which must have been something of a slap in the face.
posted by pooch at 11:16 AM on January 23, 2006