Posted in Baseball America,Cesar Puello
There were a bunch of questions in my mailbox and on Twitter about OF Cesar Puello who was named Baseball America’s #3 Mets prospect today. It’s a ranking based on tools and upside, but it’s well deserved. Here are my favorite pieces on Puello from around here recently: In August, I wrote a lengthy piece [...]
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Usually I have to brace myself when I click on the comments bar to find out what molehill is being turned into a mountain. But this time around it wasn't so bad. Even a post devoted entirely to the fans of Federer and Nadal failed to stir many hornets—maybe it was because the post itself was so long that everyone gave up (memo to self: bore them to death). Peace is a good thing . . . right?
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I have a question for Kamakshi and Steve—what rivalries from the past do you think would have been the most divisive regarding fan base with current technology?—Carrie
I remember having strong feelings about almost all of the game’s major rivalries. I came down on the side of Borg when he went up against McEnroe, but I switched totally to McEnroe once he started to go up against Lendl. I went for Steffi over Monica, Chris over Martina, Agassi over Sampras, Becker over Edberg—actually I can’t remember which side I was on there. Maybe it’s because they were both European, and didn’t seem to have much against each other. The one where I’d say that you absolutely had to take sides was McEnroe-Lendl. There was the Cold War aspect (at least if you were an American fan), there were the players’ totally different styles and attitudes to the game and to life, and, not least, there was the personal hatred between the two. On a couple of occasions, McEnroe wouldn’t even pronounce Lendl’s name correctly in the speeches after the match—he called him eye-van.
What’s interesting thinking back are the non-rivalries. Wilander and Lendl dueled a lot, but I don’t think they were rivals—Mats just didn’t seem like a rival kind of guy. Sampras and Becker also had their share of classics, but there was nothing but mutual respect there, and for fans, they didn’t represent different sides of anything. And McEnroe-Connors: A personal rivalry par excellence, but I don’t remember either of them inspiring armies of people to mass behind them. I guess they represented the same thing: aggressive, ornery, Irish-Catholic left-handedness.
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I respect and admire Federer (I don't understand how one can be a fan of tennis and not do those things), but admit that I do sometimes get miffed at the “he’s so smooth and perfect” comments. I shouldn’t. After all, it’s the smoothness and perfection that bore me. Obviously, those things aren't boring for Federer fans, so why shouldn't they celebrate those qualities?—Miri
One thing the TENNIS.com blogs have shown me, which I don’t think I ever quite realized before, is how many various opinions on any one subject are perfectly valid. Take Andy Roddick: You might see him yell a linesperson, get turned off by his attitude, and think that there couldn’t be any other conclusion. But then you go on the blog and there’s someone who is saying that she cringes at Roddick’s outbursts at times, but that his struggle with himself and the expectations that were placed on him to be the next great American also make her identify with him. And then you think: Yeah, that’s true, too; both reactions are true; there are a lot of truths to anything or anyone you observe, and participating in the conversation between those truths is the real pleasure of being a sports fan.
Ditto for the comment above from Miri. You might watch Federer and see how elegantly he plays and think, “How could anyone not love to watch that?” But then you see that there are people who don’t love it. I know this sounds kind of obvious, but actually being able to read so many perspectives drives it home: There are all kinds of exasperating elements to an Internet tennis blog/board, but it’s also freeing; you're free to find out for yourself what you really do think of a player, and you can let the various other opinions here add to those thoughts.
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So you think that Rafa was motivated by fear of embarrassment? You choose your words carefully, and that is why I take issue with this particular group of words? Really? Rafa? I don't know where you got that, but that’s not how Rafa rolls. He was motivated by what always motivates him—that fierce pride and will to win, that gritty toughness that makes him stay in the fight and battle. The word "fear" should not be used in conjunction with Rafa.—Mindy M
Fierce pride is not all that removed from fear of embarrassment—they’re intertwined. I know from playing that one of the things that I hate about missing a shot when there are people watching is the sense of failing in public, the raw embarrassment of it. I can only imagine what it’s like to have that feeling magnified a thousand-fold in front of a paying audience. I think, after the first set against Roddick, Rafa’s pride in being No. 1, which might be a new pride for him, kicked in—"I can’t go out like I did last year, I’m the top guy now, I have to represent."
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another write up with the Nadal was physically and/or emotionally tired crap. Nadal had 5 weeks off prior to WTF. Whereas Fed played and won Stockholm, Basel and had match points in the SF in Paris. Yet Nadal is the one flat at WTF? WTF indeed. If Fed could take out Murray in straights (and Murray won their prior two encounters) how come it took Nadal 3 sets and 3 hours to take him out in the SF?—mellow yellow
I thought I praised Federer’s serve and backhand and attacking plan sufficiently to avoid this type of comment, but I guess not. I did mention that Nadal looked weary during his trophy speech, but I wasn’t saying that’s why he lost—observing something about a player doesn’t mean I’m making an excuse for him. I’m not big on bringing up or focusing on perceived extenuating circumstances in general, be it knees, back, exhaustion, or a tummy ache. And when you win a tournament, you win a tournament, not just a match. If you finish your earlier matches more quickly and easily than your final-round opponent does (and the way Federer did last week), you’ve earned that edge.
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For the European audience, Tim Henman’s commentary is similar to Arias; no hyperbole, but rather illuminating analysis and objective opinions. Similarly, Mats Wilander pre and post match analysis is full of understated expertise and relevant commentary.—Abraxas
I’ve liked Henman when I’ve heard him at Wimbledon, much more than Rusedski, who I listened to throughout the fifth set of Isner-Mahut. Becker is good for a laugh always, but is intelligent as well, in that way that you can only get form having actually experience what the players are experiencing. Most people in tennis will tell you that Mats Wilander is one of the cooler guys in the game. I do like John McEnroe, though—good voice and pretty self-deprecating for someone who was No. 1. My former favorite was John Barrett—he's hilarious, if a little stand-offish, in person. I always wanted to hear a JB/Arias booth combination, but it was never meant to be.
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What about Cliff Drysdale…he's another one that gotta send out to pasture!—Julie
I only put this here because it made me laugh. I like Cliff. He’s the voice of tennis at its swankiest, and he’s been in all the tennis trenches—amateur champ, pioneering pro, ATP president, commentator. In general, I have more sympathy for commentators since I started doing the podcasts we do on the site. It's tough to get what you really want to say across in such a short amount of time.
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One question: Will the shortening of the ATP season mean that we won't be having Arias (and the WTF) with our Thanksgiving celebrations?—Ruth
I guess that’s true. Lengthen the season again!
Alabama football is synonymous with one man – Paul W. Bryant. It is a fact that must be recognized and acknowledged before any true understanding of the program can proceed.
This presents a serious difficulty since Coach Bryant’s legend was already formidable during his lifetime and has scarcely dimmed in the years since. The night the Crimson Tide won the 2009 National Championship in Pasadena, an anonymous fan left a single rose in the hands of the coach’s statue. And every Alabama fan who heard about it felt it was completely fitting.
Despite that consensus of feeling, its almost impossible to condense into a simple explanation for others. Coach Bryant was a tough cookie to pin down when he was alive, and the task has only gotten harder since he passed away. The passage of years and the abundance of anecdotes have complicated things rather than clarified them.
Keith Dunnavant’s 1996 book on Coach Bryant’s life, Coach, The Life of Paul “Bear” Bryant is recognized as one of the best biographies of the Alabama legend. While it doesn’t seem to completely succeed at getting to the heart of this complex man, it certainly provides one of the best overviews of his life.
The story is simple enough: the son of an Arkansas sharecropper becomes a football player at a famed university and helps his team to a national championship. He then goes on to resurrect a series of downtrodden programs before becoming head coach of his alma mater and leading it to the greatest successful era in college football history. He stepped down after amassing the winningest record of any coach in the sport and passed away almost a month later.
The problem is it does nothing to explain that strange charisma that made players follow him unwaveringly despite the brutality of his practices and seemingly callous feelings for them. It can’t address his importance to the state and the South as a whole that went far beyond his position as a football coach. And it can’t tell why all of this reverberates so strongly almost three decades after his death.
Dunnavant’s book does a great job in trying to bridge this immense gap. He tells the story of Coach Bryan’ts life in a literary fashion relying on chronological order when it suits the narrative and abandoning it when it does not. He follows the ebb and flow of events that shaped Coach Bryant’s life and, in turn all those around him his life affected.
One canard Dunnavant takes particular care to destroy is the idea Coach Bryant hewed to a conservative approach to the game – defense and a rushing attack were the mainstays of his approach. Instead, Coach shows that while Coach Bryant wasn’t by any means an innovator, he wouldn’t hesitate to absorb a new strategy or approach if he thought it would give him an edge.
“Rather than being chained to a set of beliefs, Bryant was a pragmatists who was strengthened by the ability to adapt in order to give his team the best chance of winning,” Dunnavant writes.
It was, Dunnavant argues, his emphasis on organization to maximize results while preparing his players physically and psychologically that made him as successful as he proved to be.
Dunavant’s other book on Alabama football is the excellent The Missing Ring which recounts the Crimson Tide’s 1966 season and subsequent snubbing for the national championship. “Unbeaten, untied and uncrowned,” as he aptly phrases it.
The dual approach works well since The Missing Ring ends up being more about Alabama football and not Coach Bryant specifically. In Coach, the 1966 season is one element of the tale and the factors that went into its unfolding and the people who were involved are much more the focus.
The other book that Coach must be evaluated in terms of is Alan Barra’s biography of Coach Bryant, The Last Coach. Yet the way these two great books approach their subject matter is sharply different.
The dual approach works well since The Missing Ring ends up being more about Alabama football and not Coach Bryant specifically. In Coach, the 1966 season is one element of the tale and the factors that went into its unfolding and the people who were involved are much more the focus.
The other book that Coach must be evaluated in terms of is Alan Barra’s biography of Coach Bryant, The Last Coach. Yet the way these two great books approach their subject matter is sharply different.
Barra’s book is much more comprehensive and provides a contextual window for Coach Bryant’s life that is invaluable to understanding his impact to the school, the sport and the South as a whole. Dunnavant goes for a broader emotional picture. He’s less interested in mapping the course of Coach Bryant’s life than capturing the themes that drove it the course it did.
As a result, Coach is a much more personal work. It takes a great deal of time trying to humanize a man whose legend makes such a task almost impossible. There’s far too much invested in what Coach Bryant represented to completely ever see him as an individual. An Dunnavant points out this was a situation that Coach Bryant encountered with regularity during his lifetime.
“Coach Bryant had a kind of magic to him,” Dunnavant quotes a former player saying. “It was something you couldn’t really put your finger on, but you could feel it whenever he walked into the room.”
Still, the effort is important. While Dunnavant might not succeed at unearthing exactly what made Coach Bryant tick he does come closest at touching the emotional core of what he came to represent. I’ve read this book several times and still find myself tearing up at the account of Coach Bryant’s last months and passing. I’ll bet the next time you read it, you will too.
There is no more iconic moment in the Alabama/Penn State rivalry than the Goal Line Stand during the 1979 Sugar Bowl. That one play has come to embody the physical, determined approach the two teams share toward the game as well as something on the side of the sublime as well.
Certainly the fact the National Championship was on the line magnified the importance of the play but taken out of context it’s difficult to understand the gravity of the event. In terms of singular drama, the Goal Line Stand can’t match, say, the desperation block that clinched the Crimson Tide win over the Nittany lions in the final seconds of the 1989 contest between the two.
The Goal Line Stand was critical but by no means decisive. It occurred with more than five minutes to play in the game and with Alabama leading by a touchdown. There was a lot of football left to be played in the Superdome that fateful New Year’s Day. A score would have tied the game, not ensured a victory for Penn State.
In fact, its emotional power depends on the whole series of downs, from Don McNeal’s hit that denied Penn State’s Don Fitzkee end zone and put the ball on the one yard line as well as bothgoal line efforts that kept the Nittany Lion’s All-American tailback Mike Guman from scoring. It embodied the entire game in which it occurred as well as the season the Crimson Tide battled through to get to New Orleans.
And the outcome of the game didn’t answer the question of Alabama’s title either. The Crimson Tide had to wait two more days for the outcome of the final polls to be named the National Champion and even then folks on the west coast wanted to squawk about it. (Interesting aside: officials from ABC tried to put together a one-game playoff between Alabama and USC that was nixed by the NCAA)
Two books penned about Alabama’s 1978 National Championship team really help address this problem and give a full view of what that one play really meant and why it has achieved such stature in Crimson Tide football lore: Steve Townsend’s Tales from 1978-79 Alabama Football, A Time of Champions and Barry Krauss & Joe M. Moore’s Ain’t Nothin’ But A Winner, Bear Bryant, The Goal Line Stand and A Chance of A Lifetime.
From the point-of-view of the present, the 1978 National Championship season seems almost a pre-ordained event – the penultimate title for Paul W. Bryant, earned in the twilight of his amazing career. Both these books quickly discard that perception and reveal the season as a campaign that in doubt from the start and uncertain right down to the wire (and even past it).
The 1978 season started well with a number one ranking and a decisive victory over tenth-ranked Nebraska. The good feelings lasted until about halftime of the following week’s game against Missouri. The Tigers – who had proven an elusive foe for Coach Bryant in two prior meetings – turned the tables on the Tide that afternoon and seemed to be going for a hat trick against the Bear.
Tide linebacker E.J Junior blocked and recovered a punt and started a rally that led to the win. But a week after that, even his heroics couldn’t pull out a victory against No. 7 USC. Alabama fell to No. 7 in the polls and the chances of a National Championship reached a nadir.
Things got so bad that Alabama fans booed their team during the Vanderbilt game, according to Townsend. But by that time, Krauss writes, the team had come too far to consider giving up.
“What I remember about that season – particularly in the first half, when we were always behind and slugging it out for every win – is that we were a Big Play team. We lived off of them. They Turned losses into wins. They changed the momentum. They kept us alive.”
Townsend’s book provides a superb over view of the rollercoaster ride. Each game is accounted for but also the intense lobbying for positions in the polls and bowls that had to fall into perfect place for Alabama to have a shot at the title.
The Nittany Lion’s No. 1 ranking put Joe Paterno in the driver’s seat for the championship, his team’s final opponent of the season wasn’t clear until mid-December. And when that foe became clear, he realized he might have gotten more than he bargained for.
“I didn’t think Alabama was the best team we could have played until I watched them on film,” Paterno admitted in the days leading up to the Sugar Bowl. “I was wrong. This is by far the best team we have played or could play.”
So when Krauss met Guman at the top of the pile in the fourth quarter and denied the Nittany Lion tailback back from reaching the goal line, it crystallized a whole season’s worth of suffering and perseverance for the Crimson Tide. As great as the play was, it encapsulated something even more given the trials of the team.
“If there was ever one person whose life was totally changed by actions occurring in that single instant, I am that person,” Krauss writes. “For better or for worse, I became a part of the lives of those who had been impacted by that play.”
Moreover, the Goal Line Stand was the perfect analogy for the game in which it occurred. Both squads were immensely talented, superbly coached and played at the peak of their powers. Neither team left anything on the field that day and players from both sides admitted it was the most punishingly physical contest they had ever played.
Krauss has become the hero of the game but the books introduce you to the whole array of great competitors on that team that made the championship possible; defensive back Murray Legg, linebacker Byron Braggs and the whole Redwood Forest Defense not to mention running back Major Ogilvie, quarterback Jeff Rutledge and split end Bruce Bolton.
Townsend’s tome has the staccato style of a sports columnist and a distressing habit of abandoning chronological order for the sake of dramatic effect. The result is less enthralling than it is confusing. Krauss slides into a good-ole-boy familiarity at times that is less than endearing. The impression is he’s writing the book more for his old buddies than a general audience and few things are more boring than listen to people talk about the dumb things they did in college like they were the greatest thing ever.
Still, these negatives are pretty minor compared to the wealth of detail and insight both books provide in terms of their subjects. And both go on beyond that fateful game to continue the stories. Townsend gives the blow-by-blow account of Alabama’s 1979 season and Coach Bryant’s final National Championship while Krauss relates his time in the NFL.
Still, the emotional centerpiece for both books is The Goal Line Stand and, as one might expect, the man who comes closest to pinning it down is Coach Bryant speaking on the eve of the big game to a select group of reporters in his hotel room.
“It’ll be like all big games. Probably, come down to a big play or two in the fourth quarter, and the team that makes ‘em will go home happy and the team that doesn’t will always wonder what they could have done differently. I just hope and pray tomorrow Alabama makes those plays.”
Mark Yost’s Varsity Green: A Behind the Scenes Look at Culture and Corruption in College Athletics will be a somewhat frustrating read for many college sports fans and they will find themselves screaming “Amen!” one moment and then shaking their fists in the air the next. On one hand, Yost absolutely eviscerates the NCAA as a powerful monopoly with a vague 400+ page rulebook open to wildly different interpretations and applications that can be unilaterally imposed (something we know about all too well.) On the other hand, he’s guilty at times of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in shaking down the entire collegiate athletics system as corrupt and almost beyond hope of redemption (that is if you believe it needs redemption in the first place.) Yost covers a lot of ground in 200 pages: the origins of intercollegiate athletics, corporate sponsorship, broadcasting rights, academics, recruiting, the facilities arms race, apparel deals/endorsements as well as alumni and booster donations, etc.
Yost derides the idea that there ever was a “golden age” regarding college sports. He points back to the first known intercollegiate athletic competition in the U.S., a rowing event between Yale and Harvard in 1852 that was staged neither in Massachusetts nor Connecticut, but in New Hampshire. The event was the brainchild of a railroad man and designed to bring more attention to and passengers on the railroad. The athletes and staff were given free fares and the spectators expected to pay. While one can’t take an event from 150 years ago and use it as evidence of the system being forever corrupt and/or profit driven, it certainly shows that collegiate athletics were a vehicle for making money right out of the gates in this country both for private enterprises as well as the universities. Other instances are cited of schools using professionals and players from other universities in contests. While this sort of cheating certainly couldn’t go on today, it shows that there’s no shortage of precedent of academics and ethics being shelved in the name of winning.
While I agree with him that there likely was never an era of squeaky clean college sports, I don’t think it’s an evil empire either. In the closing chapters, Yost goes so far as to brand the NCAA a “cartel” that seeks to do nothing but exploit others for its own profit. I’m certainly not a huge fan of the Indianapolis based organization, but I think calling them a “cartel” or “mafia” is just a wee bit unfair and that’s where the book really lost me. Yost heavily concentrates on football and men’s basketball, the “money sports.” Those sports certainly grab the headlines and the big money, but it takes away from the fact that the majority of college athletes are not participating in revenue generating sports and likely not receiving the rock star treatment that football and basketball players get. Oddly enough, Yost acknowledges this, but then still throws the whole system under the bus.
Despite that major beef with the book, I still think it’s worth reading as it has some interesting info such as salary structures for coaches, the bowl system, conference revenue distribution, etc. For instance, I’d forgotten that Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz made $ 4.6 million in guaranteed money during one 13 month period in 2006-07 (yet we didn’t hear about how Iowa was ruining college football like Alabama was accused of doing with Saban’s contract.) Interestingly, Yost acknowledges that the big money coaches: Saban, Stoops, Tressel, Meyer, etc. typically are worth their salaries in that they earn their athletic departments huge returns on their investments. He’s not necessarily endorsing the system, but saying that it makes sense and can’t be argued with from an economic standpoint.
Regardless of whether or not one agrees with a single argument of Yost’s, one cannot deny that he brings a plethora of topics to the table that require serious attention. At the very least, Varsity Green is a good primer for discussion on some serious issues facing our society today, such as the watering down of academic standards and other forms of favoritism that have impact well beyond the sporting arena.
At this point, the “official review” is over, but I wanted to include this bit in the main body of the post since things in the comments section often get lost in the shuffle. Think of this as bonus material on a DVD.
One hilarious section from the book on the facilities arms race involves a school that’s a favorite among RBR readers: Michigan. A group of Michigan alumni that were against the expansion of Michigan’s stadium and who, mostly, were not football fans operated a group under the name “Save the Big House.” The last quote from Save the Big House spokesman John Pollack is golden and will sound familiar I’m sure:
“To enshrine wealth and power in glass and steel at the leading public institution totally undermines the values of the university itself. You are taking the classic football stadium in America and turning it into every NFL venue.”
Pollack described the Big House as
“…a place where autoworkers and millionaires can come together to cheer on their team.”
And here’s the money quote:
“Michigan doesn’t need to keep up with the Jones. We are the Joneses.”
As I’ve said before, I personally think that Barcelona midfielder Xavi Hernandez is one of the best players in the world. He’s not the “flash” player on any of his teams, I’ll grant you that; his speed is average, his height is nonexistant, and there are times where he may appear a little rotund. But [...]
Avoiding the Drop