Sports Notes, 10/10

Both "party crashers" have advanced to the World Series, with my Yankees having been ousted in six games by the Texas Rangers of Dallas, and the Yankees' opponent from last year's Series, the Phillies, having been ousted by the San Francisco Giants, also in six games. It's the first time since 2002 that my mother's sports nemesis, the Giants, have made it to the World Series (Barry Bonds and the rest got beat by the Angels that year), and it's the first time ever that the Rangers have made it. In fact, when they won game two against the Yankees in this years ALCS, evening that series at 1-1, they recorded the first home playoff victory in franchise history.

There are advertisements around town here in Austin for the Rangers, which I think is neat...I've said all along that any team with Cliff Lee and CJ Wilson on the mound, Josh Hamilton and Vladdy in the lineup, and flamethrower Neftali Perez in the 'pen will have a shot...but this town, and this state in general, is not a baseball place. High school football gets more attention here than major league baseball. But the catch-phrase on the ads make me say wtf? It reads: "Bring the Championship Home".

The Rangers? Bring the Championship home? Which championship would that be? Texas has never had any professional baseball championships. The Houston Astros finally made the World Series for the first time in 2005, when they got swept by Corrie's White Sox. This is, like I mentioned earlier, the Rangers first opportunity. The Longhorn League, a minor league from the 40s, was pretty exciting when you look at the stats (kinda like the late 90s steroid era), but, c'mon...UT, though, has won a few championships.

Maybe they meant football...college (UT in 2005) or professional (Dallas, 1995)...or maybe basketball (Houston, 1995)?

Speaking of the NFL, last week there were some brutal helmet-to-helmet hits--you know, the kinds macho idiots love--and the league clarified the rules and levied stiff fines on those players. There has been recent discussions about the violence wreaked by a career playing the game of American football, about the concussions, about the league at first ignoring the brain damaging play and now almost confronting it, about the players union letting the old "warriors" from the 60s, 70s, and 80s basically dying in the street penniless and demented, and it's caused some unwanted press for everyone involved. So this week, there weren't any extremely vicious hits, and defensemen were complaining that the way they were trained was no longer "okay", that they might retire now, and that the game would be changed forever.

This leads me to the inevitable conclusion: Will the eradication of "American football" happen in our lifetime?

Of course my assumption here is that tackle football, as we know it, has a limited shelf life. It won't be too long before the face-mask is removed, the tackling becomes less violent, the hits become less jarring...next thing you know we'll be at two-hand-touch or flag-football status, and then what? You can't sell machismo and "battling on the grid-iron" and "warrior status" with touch football. Maybe you can, and maybe we'll see.

American football, I think I'm trying to get to as a point, with it's violence and machismo, might be viewed differently in subsequent epochs, like how we view Roman gladiatorial games now. Football, in how it's sold, marketed, and presented, is pure bloodsport, just without the blood. But, I myself did spend most of the day watching it.

Another thing sport related that will be viewed as a major mistake in the future, at least by everyone then and not just a few now, is the crime of publicly funding sporting venues. I'll have more to say about that later, thanks to a book that organizes the information by the columnist Dave Zirin.