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Category: Sports

Movie Review: Undefeated

26 January 2012

One of the Oscar-nominated documentaries, Undefeated, sounds more dramatic and engrossing than it turns out to be: set in north Memphis, Tennessee, in the arena of inner-city high school football players during the chronically losing Manassas Tigers’ 2009 football season, a tough coach steps in to inspire the students to win the first playoff game in the high school’s 110-year history.

Critics are gushing over this real-life Blind Side-type picture and it’s easy to see why. The coach, a Christian named Bill Courtney who volunteered to coach the boys’ team, is very dedicated according both to this movie and to an interviewed newspaper reporter who, the press notes disclose while the film does not, wrote an article that inspired the film. But Coach Courtney is a mixed case for coaching and Undefeated raises questions about its approach.

From the start, Coach Courtney is a bit theatrical, telling the players that he will kill himself for the team. Exaggeration continues, which is fine for a coach who needs to stir his team to victory, but rigorous training does not, judging by what we see. Undefeated is less interested in the athletics of football than it is in proselytizing its themes of selflessness, forgiveness and sacrifice. Also, with no pretext to why this documentary was made, by whom, or in what context, the perspective is blurred; in one scene, a kid’s in trouble yet in the next scene, the coach finds out from another player and we’re left to wonder why facts and sequence were edited out. And with a coach at the center who apparently attends a religious camp called ManRise, takes public school kids to church and leads them in prayer with not a peep from anyone in a state where the Scopes trial took place, Coach Courtney probably violates the law and certainly grates on the nerves.

As Undefeated tracks three players, big lug tackle O.C., criminally-inclined linebacker Chavis, and a smaller kid called “Money” who plays offensive lineman, it’s easy to get into this story of a sad, poor team and its feisty coach who preaches that character counts. We want to root for the kids, see them win and we’re so invested in their tales and troubles that we start to forget it’s a movie. Supposedly a documentary, though important action happens offscreen, as when Chavis assaults another player but not before the screen goes blank for no apparent reason, and Undefeated ultimately feels as real and authentic as so-called reality television. That’s not to say it’s without value, and I’m glad these kids apparently learned something and did well. But between references to “haves and have-nots” and fairy tale endings where anonymous rich people pay for an entire college education and thugs turn into humble servants, I noticed that preachy Coach Courtney never had time for his wife and kids, which he eventually admits, and that for all his preaching he sets a poor example as a father.

All of which is a shame because how schools conduct sports is a serious issue that deserves a serious documentary. We are currently plagued with news about concussions in football players (which never comes up here) and what may be a link to a form of encephalitis, sex abuse scandals and arrests at Penn State, Syracuse and the Amateur Athletic Union (whose director was fired after he was accused of abuse by former basketball players during his youth sports work in Memphis). Instead, Undefeated offers prayers, bromides and slogans, like an episode of Huckabee without the fiddlers, banjo playing and aw shucks grins.

Permalink | Posted in Movies, Sports, Weinstein Company, The

Anti-Hero Worship

23 January 2012

“You’re our hero,” read a sign at a statue of the late government-college football coach Joe Paterno, who died on Sunday at the age of 85. But Paterno, who by his own admission sidestepped, ignored or evaded allegations of child rape, is not a hero. He was a football coach at a state college and he made crucial errors of judgment which, by the kindest interpretation of his involvement, which was under investigation, may have aided or abetted serious crimes against children. Nevertheless, government-financed Penn State declared that it will hold a public memorial service, where signs, photography and video will be forbidden. The governor, Tom Corbett, ordered state flags to fly at half-staff. Joe Paterno, an employee of the college for 61 years who by most accounts did his job and coached football better than most, does not in my estimation deserve the accolades. He worked for a well-respected college and his primary responsibility was to teach students and provide an example and, whatever the outcome of the charges against his former colleague, Jerry Sandusky, whom I think is guilty, he failed. “I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was,” he told the Washington Post about his actions in his final interview. So, he made a mistake and did so at a place for higher learning on the taxpayers’ dime, which, while it does not make him a monster, makes Paterno a non-hero and undeserving of worship by people in the Keystone State and everywhere else. We don’t yet have all the information about Sandusky’s alleged crimes or Paterno’s actions, but, increasingly, sports spectators worship thugs, not heroes, as pro hockey team owner Mario Lemieux said when he threatened to quit. Given what we do know, Paterno worship is more of the same.

Another non-hero is also a government employee. Her name is Gabrielle Giffords, the stricken Arizona congresswoman who was shot and survived in a lunatic’s attack in Tucson, Arizona, last year. It was a good call for her to quit, as she recently announced, though it would have been better had she done it sooner. Her district has essentially been without representation since she was injured in a terrible tragedy in which lives were lost. It is a representative’s job to serve the republic and represent constituents and she should have quit her job months ago. Instead, Congresswoman Giffords, too, is being treated as some sort of heroine. I am sure there are millions of Americans like me who are sorry she was shot and wish her well. But it doesn’t make her a heroine or excuse the lack of representation for Americans who deserve full, congressional representation during the nation’s darkest times since the Depression.

A third government non-hero, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, a Christian libertarian son of a GOP presidential candidate, was detained earlier today by the TSA for refusing a government-dictated security pat-down. While Sen. Paul exercised his individual rights and I hope (and doubt) his act of civil disobedience encourages people to act to kill the TSA, Matt Drudge’s red-colored headline, “TSA DETAINS U.S. SENATOR”, should read: TSA DETAINS U.S. CITIZEN. The outrage is that Americans are submitted to the tyranny of unconstitutional restrictions on travel and association every day. That a politician is affected, too, should be of no concern to anyone except the politician. Any decent politician would use the detainment as an opportunity to build support for a law abolishing the government agency.

Because praise for non-heroes trivializes the concept of heroism, glorifying these three government workers – Coach Paterno, Congresswoman Giffords, Senator Paul – redounds to anti-hero worship. Real heroes are those who consistently live life at their best; men such as Andrew Carnegie, Steve Jobs and John Lewis. Real hero-worshippers refuse to raise a glass to mediocrity. They know the difference.

Permalink | Posted in Culture, Education, Politics, Sports, Travel

Movie Review: Moneyball

21 September 2011

Brad Pitt’s version of real life baseball manager Billy Beane (that’s his name), which powers Sony’s Moneyball, hates losing more than he wants to win, as he puts it. Unfortunately, that’s both the movie’s theme and what makes its message so dreary, joyless and unenjoyable. Watching someone hate losing for two hours and 13 minutes, with not a single moment when you just get to indulge in the pleasure of playing baseball for the sake of the game, is agonizing. The protagonist of this star vehicle is so busy talking about letting baseball be baseball by cutting to its core, liberated from the conformity of a Major League system that drains the game of risk, ability, and independence, that Moneyball (based on the book by Michael Lewis) comes up short on dramatizing both making money and baseball.

Despite his outstanding title performance in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Brad Pitt’s made a career out of playing these vacant downer types. From Thelma and Louise and Se7en to more recent fare such as the godawful Babel, watching him play another jaded type is old hat, though he does fine as the ex-ballplayer turned manager who tries to remake the Oakland A’s into a winning team based on a cost-efficient approach. But reducing baseball to stats and facts is dull and lifeless in the hands of two writers (Steven Zaillian, who wrote the overrated, lifeless Schindler’s List, and Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the overrated, lifeless The Social Network) who have lifeless down pat. Moneyball‘s packed with long stretches of silence, the sound of people’s sighs and swallows, and endless navel-gazing about nothing. There’s barely any baseball, let alone love of making money playing ball.

Beane’s been beaten down in life and it shows; his daughter is a 12-year-old who looks 37 and writes depressing songs like she’s Janis Ian, but you would be too hanging around his sad sack of a father. After hitting rock bottom in negotiations, he finds an Ivy League geek (Jonah Hill) to set things right and director Bennett Miller (Capote) takes way too long in loading the bases. Everything’s predictable and, while the business of baseball is potentially fascinating, here it’s played as a false dichotomy between rationalism and going by feelings, tradition and intuition. Philip Seymour Hoffman portrays the head coach of the A’s but there’s hardly any team to coach as Beane and his college nerd make maneuvers and calculate a winning combination. None of the players stands out and ballgames feel like waiting in an airport security line. There’s no sense of play.

There are a few good scenes and decent lines, and, disconnected from the film as a whole, the story of going up against Major League baseball’s establishment has its moments. Certain stretches hold and sustain interest, such as a scene between Pitt and Hill trying to score a key player. But then the talky picture gets back to an unbearably snarky, slow-moving approach. Moneyball poses as if it has something to say, tacking on a point about doing what matters, but it’s mostly talk and no action, so, in the end it’s as empty, obvious and manipulative as a tawdry 50s’ melodrama, banging the moviegoer over the head with pixelated close-ups of players’ faces and the words ‘won’ or ‘lost’ to score its points. Billy Beane, whose story is undoubteldy more interesting than this movie, comes undone in violent outbursts and constantly groans about how it’s hard not to be romantic about baseball. The dull, somber Moneyball makes it easier.

Permalink | Posted in Movies, Sony Pictures, Sports

Oscar de la Hoya: Recovery is Selfish

1 September 2011

In a Yahoo! Sports article by Kevin Iole, world champion boxer Oscar de la Hoya admits to being an alcoholic, cheating on his wife, and considering suicide. Read the article here.

But in an act that may take more courage than getting in the boxing ring, de la Hoya says he’s chosen to seek help because he is selfish, which he regards as a virtue, not a vice. As 38-year-old de la Hoya, who admitted himself for addiction treatment into the Betty Ford clinic, said: “I did this for myself…I’ve learned the hard way [that] being an addict isn’t easy, especially for a public person like me. I’ve had people of all walks of life coming up to me and crying and telling me about their lives and problems. I’m happy if I could help them and get them some relief, but I did what I did for me.”

Good for de la Hoya, who announced his retirement in 2009 and is the president of Golden Boy Promotions. Everyone knows that cleaning up and overcoming addiction is enormously difficult. Not everyone knows that being selfish is the first step.

Permalink | Posted in Culture, News, Sports

Book Review: The Soul of a Horse

6 July 2011

Some years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing a real Hollywood maverick named Joe Camp. You might remember that Joe created the Benji movies, those independent features that shocked the studios and made a bundle of money by offering simple stories about a persistent little mutt named Benji. Camp, whose son, Brandon, recently directed Love Happens with Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston, kept creating books and movies about the beloved Benji, whom I referred to in 2004 as the screen’s most popular pooch since Lassie. But when the last movie failed to ignite, Joe Camp was discouraged and decided to take up a new hobby, with his lawyer wife, Kathleen. The result is his book, The Soul of a Horse: Life Lessons from the Herd, published in 2008. It’s an exercise in transference from dog to horse by someone who made his career out of caring about animals.

One of the best aspects of the Benji pictures, including the one that didn’t do as well, Benji Off the Leash, is Joe Camp’s strong sense of what forms the bond between man and pet and his soul-searching book about horses builds on that bond. As Camp turns inward in this meandering journal of an amateur horseman discovering and coming to terms with how one ought to treat a horse, he yields page after page of original and thoughtful insights about properly tending to this beautiful animal of prey. From feeding, riding and communicating to blankets, horseshoes, and ropes tied to posts, his hard-won lessons on the ranch, coupled with Kathleen’s slightly different approach, is another volume in the growing literature of books that argue for an organic, or “natural”, treatment of the horse.

One need not accept all of his conclusions, most of which make sense, to gain value from this thought-provoking, and, at times, poetic call for knowledge and understanding in horsemanship. As he puts it: “Few have put it all together into a single philosophy, a unified voice, a complete lifestyle change for the domesticated horse.”

“Leadership makes a difference,” Camp writes. “Even with borrowed horses. Or rented trail horses, who carry folks around every day of their lives. You never know when it will come in handy for the horse to think of you as a leader. And it’s so much nicer to know that you’re off on a ride with a friend. A partner who trusts you. Not some vacant-eyed mechanical device manufactured just to carry you around. The rub, of course, is that leadership isn’t easy or free. With horses or in life. It’s earned. But it does make a difference, and is worth every ounce of the effort.” Whether it’s his most treasured horse, Cash, or Kathleen’s Skeeter, or Mariah, Pocket, Handsome, or, later, Mouse, Soul of a Horse, with a foreword by Monty Roberts, is itself something of a treasure, from a man whose love of dogs has given us so much joy on screen. (Kindle for iPad app version read and reviewed.)

Permalink | Posted in Books, Crown Books, Pets, Sports

The Vancouver Kiss

21 June 2011

The story of the young couple in the above photograph merits a moment of attention. According to an interview with NBC’s Today Show, the woman on the street, Alex Thomas, was pushed by Vancouver, British Columbia, riot police to the ground, where she apparently started to panic until her boyfriend, Scott Jones, kissed her to calm her down.

I don’t know the details of their involvement, if any, in the Vancouver hockey riots, which are nothing new (I commented on L.A.’s 2009 sports-related riots here and proper sportsmanship here), and I am disgusted by the looting and attacks on private property. The photograph, apparently captured inadvertently by photographer Richard Lam, is fitting for our troubled times. Whether the Canadian government’s use of force was appropriate in this instance, this young couple’s kiss amid the riots is a bright spot in dark and dangerous days. With the United States and the West in uncharted territory on the brink of economic collapse, with total government control a real and imminent possibility, and engaged in an undeclared war of total destruction with jihadist barbarians, we should take a cue from these Canadian youths and indulge in a kiss as often as possible. Ms. Thomas describes the image as “beautiful” and she’s right. More than ever, we should live in (not to be confused with for) the moment and make love, with vigor and passion for life, selfishly acting to be happy here on earth. We should hold close those we value, as Mr. Jones did when he “seized the day”, and kissed, and calmed, his girlfriend.

In these enormously difficult times, we ought to “seize the day” and argue for reason and fight for our lives, and too many, perhaps most, accept what’s wrong with the world or, worse, reject it yet stand by and do nothing. But fighting is not the ultimate purpose in life. The kiss reminds us what is.

Permalink | Posted in Culture, Sports

Lamar Hunt by David Sweet

26 May 2011

Sports writer and editor David Sweet doggedly gets down to the business of professional sports, especially the early days of pro football, soccer, and tennis, in his biographical Lamar Hunt: The Gentle Giant Who Revolutionized Professional Sports. Sweet’s account of the extraordinary son of Texas oil titan H.L. Hunt tracks his successes and failures and innovations. There are many of each.

One of them is Hunt’s founding of the defunct American Football League (AFL), forerunner to the American Football Conference (AFC) of the National Football League (NFL), with which the AFL merged to form the most successful sports league in American history. After requesting in-flight stationery from an American Airlines stewardess on a plane from Miami back to Dallas, 26-year-old Hunt jotted down his thoughts on formulating what he thought it would take to deliver pro football to Americans: three exhibition games, a 15-game schedule consisting of three teams playing eight home games and the other three teams competing in seven home games, a 60-40 split of gate revenues favoring the home team, with visiting teams choosing the larger of 40 percent or $35,000 and each football team reserving the right to two territorial draft choices. Hunt, joined by hotel businessman Barron Hilton, also planned to beat the NFL’s starting player salary by paying them ten percent more.

Chicago newspaper editor Sweet (a former and favorite editor of mine from my early newspaper days) reports these copious details, which occasionally overwhelm the narrative, with relish, marking each part of an understated career in the life of what one Sports Illustrated reporter called a “poor little rich boy”, whom he compared to someone standing up nervously in catechism class with neither force nor authority. The biography rolls out a stream of rarely discussed items from an industrial athletics archive, with such early football legends as George Blanda, George Halas, Howard Cosell, Len Dawson, Tom Landry, Don Meredith and Gale Sayers, quoted here as crediting Hunt for racial integration in pro sports.

Besides the AFL, which would have turned 50 last year, Hunt’s widely unknown achievements are impressive: the two-point conversion, the advancement of pro soccer in America, and creating the model for today’s professional tennis tour and innovative retail, amusement and stadium parks and properties. Hunt even designed the Kansas City Chiefs’ arrowhead logo, scribbling it on to a napkin. Sweet packs it all in, from Hunt’s connection to Kennedy assassin Oswald’s murderer Jack Ruby to his Christianity, which Sweet sees as providing a general moral compass that allowed him to nurture his virtues of honesty, integrity, and rationality.

Lamar Hunt combined selfish values, such as his abiding love of sports, with an ability to take risks, even when he was losing money, and earn enormous wealth, and David Sweet’s Lamar Hunt, with photos, notes and an index, capably and convincingly demonstrates that fact, though he doesn’t write it that way. Sweet credits what he calls Hunt’s humility, which is alternately supported and countered by the facts of his career in the sports industry. Clearly, the man who coined the term Super Bowl thought big, not small. So, when one former NFL commissioner asserts late in the game that Lamar Hunt did not have an ego, the reader, having consumed the abundant evidence, may conclude that Hunt merely had an ego that was healthy enough to be nourished by his own ample accomplishments.

Permalink | Posted in Books, Business, Sports, Triumph Books

Mario Lemieux on Sportsmanship

16 February 2011

Kudos to athlete and businessman Mario Lemieux, former center forward and current owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins, for denouncing the National Hockey League’s sanction of malicious initiation of physical force (as against rough play during competition) in hockey. The NHL didn’t do much to discipline the New York Islanders after they attacked the Penguins in a recent game that resulted in 346 penalty minutes.

Lemieux, a husband, father, and cancer survivor who saved the Penguins from financial failure by buying the team and is one of the sport’s greatest players, issued a statement about the NHL’s appeasement of brute force: “Hockey is a tough, physical game, and it always should be. But what happened Friday night on Long Island [when the Islanders attacked the Penguins gang-style] wasn’t hockey. It was a travesty. It was painful to watch the game I love turn into a sideshow like that. The NHL had a chance to send a clear and strong message that those kinds of actions are unacceptable and embarrassing to the sport. It failed. We, as a league, must do a better job of protecting the integrity of the game and the safety of our players. We must make it clear that those kinds of actions will not be tolerated and will be met with meaningful disciplinary action. If the events relating to Friday night reflect the state of the league, I need to re-think whether I want to be a part of it.”

Number 66 Mario Lemieux is one of hockey’s best players and one of the sport’s most successful businessmen. His all-around skills were amazing on ice and he led the Penguins to stunning victories year after year. Today, the Penguins have one of the NHL’s highest television ratings in America, according to FoxSports, and the team is worth $235 million, according to Forbes. When the ‘Guins won their third Stanley Cup a couple of years ago, Lemieux became the only individual to win the Stanley Cup as both a player and owner. He speaks with confidence, honor and reverence for the game. The NHL, which turned the other cheek on the Islanders’ brutality, should listen.

Permalink | Posted in Sports

Pittsburgh Steelers and the Steelmark

30 January 2011

Though I no longer follow professional or college sports, which I think is often as thoroughly bankrupt or corrupt as American culture, next week’s Super Bowl between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers conjures the heyday of the National Football League (NFL). I remember reading about admirable players such as Johnny Unitas and the Packers’ Bart Starr, both valued for their intelligence and integrity, during my youth, watching the Packers play in those brutal Wisconsin winters and feeling the Packers fan pride during visits to America’s Dairyland. Of course, being from Pittsburgh, I always cheered for the Steelers (and Panthers, Penguins, and Pirates). I used to wait outside hotel lobbies for a sight of the Steelers when they came to play near my town, and I remember Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, and Lynn Swann as kind athletes who graciously signed autographs and answered my countless questions. Andy Russell, Jack Lambert, Mel Blount, John Stallworth, Frenchy Fuqua, Roy Gerela, Jack Ham, Rocky Bleier, I met nearly all of those Steelers of the 1970s. Mean Joe Greene seemed just like he did on the Coke commercial. They were my heroes.

One of my first heroes was the original Pittsburgh Steeler, Andrew Carnegie. He created U.S. Steel, whose diamond-shaped design is emblazoned on the helmets of the Pittsburgh Steelers, America’s only major football team with a capitalist logo, when he sold Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan in 1901. The Steelers’ diamond-shaped logo, composed of three hypocycloids, is known as the Steelmark. Cleveland, Ohio-based Republic Steel suggested that the Steelers use the logo, an industrial trademark by then, on their helmets in 1962.

According to the Steelers’ history of the symbol, the logo was intended to convey that steel lightens your work, brightens your leisure and widens your world and that steel is important in our daily lives. During the 1970s, the logo’s meaning was extended to include the three materials used to produce steel: yellow for coal, orange for ore and blue for steel scrap. Appropriate to an American symbol of productiveness that would not be possible without property rights, the Steelers had to seek and gain permission from the American Iron and Steel Institute to change the word “Steel” to “Steelers”. The Steelmark was created by U.S. Steel (now known as USX Corp), the world’s first billion-dollar corporation, in a deal which made Andrew Carnegie the world’s richest man. The Steelmark, a symbol of mankind’s most productive period in history, is one of America’s last iconic images (Ford Motor Company’s signature logo also comes to mind) of capitalism, the nearly bygone era.

Permalink | Posted in Business, Capitalism, Sports

Thug Worship in Iran and in America

16 June 2009

Looters took over downtown Los Angeles the other night following a professional basketball victory.

A news radio reporter and several policemen were attacked, stores were looted, and, as far as I can tell, police stood down and allowed the looters to do the damage. After the Los Angeles Lakers won the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) championship in Orlando, Florida, a mob formed near the Staples Center, burning, vandalizing and destroying property everywhere in sight. Eight officers were injured, and 12 police cars, a sheriff’s vehicle, and six buses were damaged, according to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). One officer was taken to a hospital with minor injuries. Police said 25 arrests were made. One businessman, shoe store owner Richard Torres, told the Associated Press (AP) that he lost $100,000 when looters broke in and destroyed vintage sportswear and sneakers and the shop’s computers. “They were literally lighting stuff on fire,” Torres said. His store manager, Liz Sanchez, said LAPD did nothing.

In fact, LAPD Chief William Bratton, an ineffectual bureaucrat who routinely lectures the public on how the LAPD is underfunded, downplayed the looting and used the term “knuckleheads” to describe the criminals. The police clearly failed to protect the public and downtown L.A. will suffer and lose business.

But this mob mentality is rampant in the subculture of men’s professional sports, especially basketball, particularly the Lakers. Men of ability competing in athletic contests offers the sight of heroic action but thug worship replaced hero worship and engulfed sports long ago. Today, we are left with the spectacle of unkempt, baggy-clothed dog-killers, murderers and rapists spiking balls and sneering at the notion of civility. When Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant, whom I personally believe is guilty of rape, was arrested in 2003 for felony sexual assault in Colorado, Lakers fans rushed, not to defend him based on facts (though some did) but to praise him.

Dads bought their sons jerseys with his number. I heard comments on talk radio and at parties, from educated men and women, that Kobe Bryant was like an animal that couldn’t be controlled when his sexual urges came upon him and that his accuser, a hotel worker and college student, probably deserved to be raped. Far from damaging his reputation among L.A. Lakers’ fans, the rape arrest (which did not result in conviction) elevated his stature. Thug worship is part of what fuels pro sports and it played out in downtown Los Angeles. With the dereliction of duties by the LAPD, and the consent of sports fans who sanction thug worship, the lawlessness, in the City of Angels and elsewhere, will get worse.

In Teheran, we have another example of civil unrest and I am reading the news from Islamic dictatorship Iran. I doubt that the protests against the current Islamic fascist dictator, who is controlled by the religious collective that runs Iran, will lead to fundamental change in that slave state. I support resistance to theocracy, in Iran as in America, where the Obama administration, defending the Clinton administration’s anti-homosexual Defense of Marriage Act, recently compared being gay to incest (as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow pointed out in a recent broadcast). But jihadist Iran, like Nazi Germany, did not become a theocracy overnight. Predominantly Moslem Iran is infected with anti-Western ideals that are widely accepted by the people. Protest over which Islamic thug is in charge is neither a cry for man’s rights nor a demand for the only political system which supports individual rights: capitalism.

Permalink | Posted in Culture, News, Sports

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