April sports
This is the best time of year in sports. October is great also-- a chill is in the air and the Cardinals’ second season begins, but you’ve gotta choose April now as the tops because the NFL is such an unholy presence. (Pro football side note: Do I regret resigning from my 12-year-old fantasy football league after the Rams bolted to LA in January? Order up the DVD for “Concussion” and look for your answer.)The NBA has a nice thing going-- I mean if you don’t give a lick about franchise parity, and as a casual fan, I don’t. The Golden State Warriors have made the professional game as beautiful as it’s ever been, at least since the ABA folded. They erased the ’95 Bulls in the record book with 73 regular-season wins this year, and isn’t it just like Chicago sports fans to root against that? As if something that happens more than 20 years after the fact has a bearing on the evaluation of an earlier accomplishment. As if record-breakers don't pay homage to the old record-holders just by reviving the memory.
I’m partial to San Antonio though. The Spurs are the St. Louis Cardinals of the NBA in that the media actively roots against their consistent excellence and their star-free system. As an added plus, they’re my age, so I’ll root for them if and when the NBA gets its preferred match-up in the Western Conference Finals. Don’t sleep on LeBron either. The Warriors were too much for Cleveland in last year’s NBA Finals, but he’s got a better cast surrounding him this year, and nothing currently lacking or fading in terms of legacy motivation. As he explained last year, he’s the best player in the world, and that’s worth something.
As for Kobe Bryant, I was never a fan. He was the type of player the sporting press tries to perpetually convince us has personality, but I never detected any. I have a fantastic record of attending NBA games and just missing the greats, however. I went to a Bulls game at the old stadium in 1986 during Michael Jordan’s second year. He was not yet a player for the ages, but he was out with a broken leg. I saw the Celtics in Milwaukee in 1988, and Larry Bird spent the duration of the game in uniform, but lying on his stomach on the endline indulging his unaligned back. At the Staples Center last April, Kobe was on the injured list for the Lakers and didn’t helicopter in for the particular contest that I attended. That means the best basketball players I’ve ever seen play in person are Dirk Nowitzki, Julius Erving, and Allen Iverson. Oh… and Jeff Hornacek at dear old Iowa State.
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You can keep the Masters of the Professional Golf Association. Neither the athleticism nor the art of golf impresses me. Like anything, you can be the most successful at golf with a lot of hard work and discipline, but does anybody think that the great names in golf would be known at all if there were a level playing field across ethnic and socio-economic boundaries. Three sports need to be considered the headliners when it comes to racism. Number one is swimming. African-Americans weren’t even allowed in most public swimming pools until the Jackson Five started recording. Number two and three are golf and tennis. I’m putting them together because they both have been lily-white country club sports in which even one or three African-American participants have been capable of rendering the old record book as meaningless.
One black golf father, Earl Woods, and one black tennis father, Richard Williams, basically decided they would prep their children for greatness in these almost-exclusively white institutions, instead of steering them to traditional sporting avenues for blacks, and the results have been 14 Major PGA championships and 28 Grand Slam tournament singles championships. That leaves swimming. All it will take is for one Tiger or Serena to dive into the Olympic pool and that’ll be the last anybody ever heard of old Michael Phelps. You see, it’s always about opportunity. And swimming’s Serena won’t get a pass from society for doing recreational drugs like Phelps did.
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Blues and Blackhawks-- Blues up two games to one in their best-of-seven. This series means a lot more to me now that the Rams are gone.
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The Cardinals and Cubs also begin three tonight at Busch. Lackey pitching for the Cubs in the first game. Heyward bringing his .205 batting average into a start for the Chicagos in right field. We’ll see which team’s core is “fading.” Boooooooooo.
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Usually, when a 100-win baseball team gets ousted by one of the league’s runners-up in a five-game playoff series, the debate shifts on to how the first-round best-of isn’t long enough for the real winner to prove out. Not with the Cubs-Cardinals last year, no how. The sports media, instead, declared the team with three playoff wins in 13 years to be a new empire. The sabermetricians this year projected the Cubs as twelve game favorites over the team that has won the division three years running and gets its best pitcher back for a full season. Vegas put the preseason odds on the Cubs as World Champs at 6 to 1, the Cardinals 16 to 1 (that's called a value pick). I guess that’s why none of the casinos seem to be going broke. I’m relatively certain that 95% of your North American wagerers wouldn’t even know an Almedys from a Hazelbaker.
posted by CM @ 6:10 PM
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