{I am a sports fanatic} We Blackhawks fans had to wait 39 years, before our guys could hoist Lord Stanley high above the ice (2010). I was living in Dubai, and it was an Australian friend who said, "Hey Ronnie, congratulations on your Stanley Cup!" "It was a boyhood thrill," I smiled at Lance. ~Ron Villejo | For the Love of Hockey (November 12th 2012)
Some do not like the idea of anyone getting naked, never mind athletes. But while there is certainly quite a lot about mind and spirit in athletics, it is largely about body, and the body is quintessentially what makes us human.
Athletes sometimes armor their bodies so much that we hardly recognize who they are, when they doff that armor. When they do, though, their bodies are something to behold. ESPN pays homage to that which defines our humanness.
Thank you for reading (and watching), and let me know what you think!
A woman steals a discarded baseball from a young girl at Minute Maid Park.
The high five just adds insult to injury. What a giant snatch.
This clip has made the rounds - 4,893,135 views, as of right now - since a YouTuber uploaded it on August 14th 2012 and dubbed it: Evil woman steals ball from little girl. What the woman did was terrible, no doubt about it.
I ran into this clip on Google+ yesterday, and again on Facebook just a few minutes ago, and I wanted to find out more: who this woman was, what she was thinking, how the little girl felt, and whether the woman made some recompense afterwards.
In football, if a wide receiver goes up for a catch, the cornerback or safety defending him can snatch the ball away. Exactly what this woman did.
Obviously she and this girl were not playing a sport. Yet, they were at a sporting event, and we know that sporting events can be just as competitive for the fans as they are for the players. The catfight between fans of opposing teams, for example, can get downright nasty.
I couldn't find any information on the woman or the girl, but reactions of people were a study in humankind.
Can you believe this woman?? And the guy giving her the high five afterward?
As you can imagine, the clip triggered a firestorm on social media. Some people reacted with such viciousness and vulgarity, as to make the woman's action benign by comparison. I won't posted their comments, but will post the top two comments on YouTube:
I hope they replayed this on the big screen during the game.
I imagine Minute Maid Park did replay this on the big screen. I imagine there would have been strong fan reaction, and an explicit call for the woman to do the right thing, after the wrong she did.
But I don't know. From this short clip, other fans looked rather nonchalant.
I hope that lady sees this video and realizes what she did to that poor little girl! She should apologize to that little girl and give her the ball back. She is the one who actually caught it! Unbelievable!!!!!
I would like to believe that this woman ran into this clip, soon after it was posted, sought the girl out, apologized to her, and gave her ball.
But who knows, maybe nothing of the sort happened.
In football, and also in basketball and hockey, takeaways are fair game. But that comment - "She is the one who actually caught it!" - reminds us that takeaways are not fair game in real life. Yet, because we fashioned an artificial context that sanctions such actions, we've actually blurred the lines between reality and artifice.
Perhaps, too, we created that artificial context in order to permit a well-circumscribed release of our aggression and competitiveness, which real life would otherwise not allow us. But again our mental capacity, even our moral fortitude, is imperfect, and in the heat and speed of the moment we cannot always see or heed the difference.
Imagine you're a little girl at a baseball game and one of your favorite players throws a foul ball to you in the stands, but just as you are about to grab the ball some 50 year old hag grabs the ball from your hands and starts to celebrate. Well that is just what happened in this video of this little girl having the ball taken from her tiny fingers at a recent professional baseball game.
The look on the little girls face is heartbreaking. I would love to know what kind of human being does that to a little girl. How does someone like that woman live with herself?
In an effort to find more information on this clip, I Googled "there is a special place in hell" and found this quote from our esteemed former diplomat. I also searched for tweets with this phrase, and found a laundry list of curses. Here is just a sampling:
There's a special place in hell for people who blurt out "Hey you're blushing!" when you're already really embarrassed.
— Jia Mustafa (@jiamustafa) September 28, 2013
There's a special place in hell for people who don't show consideration and decency to those who work in the service industry
— Brea (@TheRedGrrl) September 28, 2013
There's a special place in hell for guys who get a girl pregnant then leave her.
— Jessica (@Make_it_Jnasty) September 17, 2013
Welcome to Twitter, @madeleine! There's a special place in hell for women who don't RT other women.
— Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff) September 26, 2013
When my son was about 7 years old, around 8 years ago, he wanted to buy his own ice cream cone. We were at a down town Chicago restaurant sitting on the upper floor. I gave him the money and he went downstairs to buy the ice cream. Some time passed and I was beginning to wonder 'what is taking so long' when one of the cleaning ladies from either central or south America came up to me quickly and said 'go downstairs' so I went... My son was standing at the counter and the lady behind the counter was just staring, dumfounded, and holding money in her hand. My child ordered the ice cream and he gave her the money which she already put in the register. A 'family', mother father and four kids, pushed him out of the way and were making the lady ignore my son, cancel his order and take their order. I told the lady to give my son his ice cream. The mother began screaming, 'who are you ? Who are you ?' . I said nothing. The manager was also standing there with a stupid blank look of his face. Then the father chimed in with manly authority and with a finger pointing directly into my face and said, 'Now look, we are here in the city enjoying our day and our children have to know they can have their way ' . I just looked at him and his finger , took my child by the hand and began walking away with our ice cream as the mother began screaming again and this is what she was saying, in an effort to insult me, "you have just one (child) .HA! I have four - look four !!!!!" ... I said nothing, but I was thinking "where I come from that's called 'dropping a litter'....
Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!
ESPN Beto Duran and Arash Markazi talk legendary Phil Jackson and the Los Angeles Lakers. Merely a handful of games into last season, the Lakers fired coach Mike Brown and triggered a buzz about the Zen Master returning to the bench.
We Chicago fans view Jackson as one of our own, as he steered the Bulls to two three-peat championships in the fabulous 1990s. His sixth and final run was the 1997 - 1998 season. He took a year off, then proceeded to win another three-peat with the Lakers. He won two more championships, before retiring at the end of the 2010 - 2011 campaign.
Add the two he won as a player, and the legend has 13 rings to slip onto his fingers and spill over onto his toes. I myself was buzzing a year ago, when Brown was fired, as Jackson came to mind immediately. It didn't matter where he coached. I just wanted to see him coach again, and run a team as masterfully as he had done before.
Say you're LeBron, and this man is sitting across the table from you. It doesn't who else is there, and it doesn't matter where you all are. The decision is a no-brainer: You play for him!
Jerry Buss was the majority owner of the Lakers, and from 1979 until his death earlier this year, he engineered 10 championships. Five of which Jackson coached. Just as he had arranged years before he died, his family retains ownership of the Lakers - Buss family won't sell Lakers - with his children Jim and Jeanie as executives running the team.
Regardless, we're now into the second generation of a family-owned business, and there is a greater likelihood of failure at this stage. Wait, there's fuel added to the fire - Jeanie Buss felt betrayed by Lakers:
Jeanie Buss, the chief of the Los Angeles Lakers' business operations and fiancee of Hall of Famer Phil Jackson, wrote in an upcoming update to her "Laker Girl" memoir that she felt the hiring of Mike D'Antoni as head coach last year instead of Jackson was "a betrayal."
Buss, in an excerpt published Sunday in the Los Angeles Times, wrote she felt she "got played," referring to the decision ultimately made by her brother Jim, which she has said took her and Jackson by surprise and had been an unsettling experience.
"Why did they have to do that?" Jeanie Buss wrote in the November edition of the book first published in 2010. "Why did Jim pull Phil back into the mix if he wasn't sincere about it? ...
"Phil wasn't looking for the job, and then he wasted 36 hours of his life preparing for it when they were never in a million years going to hire him anyway.
"How do you do that to your sister? How do you do that to Phil Jackson?"
ESPN Colin Cowherd sounded off on Lady Buss' statement, and rips her for coming out with something that she ought to have addressed with her brother privately. He's right.
I just love this Bud Light ad campaign. So hilarious. We know athletes have all sorts of rituals, but these commercials speak straight to the heart and mind of diehard fans among us. The brand chose Translation in August last year as the ad agency to create this campaign, and it's nothing short of brilliant.
Another new commercial by Translation is about fans rather than the Bud Light fantasy promotion. The spot, which features the Stevie Wonder song “Superstition,” shows the oddball and offbeat rituals that superstitious fans observe, like crossing their fingers, wearing different-colored socks, going barefoot and touching a banner as they enter a room.
As the commercial concludes, these words appear on screen: “It’s only weird if it doesn’t work.”
Bud Light is the best-selling beer brand in the US, and is the official beer sponsor of the National Football League. A mighty successful brand at that.
A trained chef and graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Amy Padour joined Kellogg Company in July 2005 to work on Kashi’s first frozen food line. As the R&D food developer, Padour developed recipes with unusual ingredients like quinoa, plantains and kale. Padour has now turned her taste buds to Kellogg’s Advanced Innovation team, where she identifies the latest food ideas and global flavors.
Let's let Wikipedia chime in, shall we:
[Quinoa is] a species of goosefoot (Chenopodium), is a grain-like crop grown primarily for its edible seeds. It is a pseudocereal rather than a true cereal, or grain, as it is not a member of the true grass family. As a chenopod, quinoa is closely related to species such as beetroots, spinach and tumbleweeds.
Hmm, alrighty, then.
Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!
Apparently it was playoff atmosphere and celebrations for Andy Reid and his Chiefs on Thursday night, in a resounding 26 - 16 win against his former team at his former stomping ground.
After a sublime first half of football in the opener against the Redskins, Chip Kelly and his Eagles have had more of the ridiculous variety, instead. Does he have what it takes - leadership stuff, mental toughness, people prowess - to pull his team together, before a 1 - 2 record spirals out of control?
Chip Kelly still had the upbeat demeanor of the successful salesman who truly believes in his product. And that’s as it should be. It wouldn’t say much about the product if Kelly’s confidence was shaken by two lost football games -- even if they were at home, against teams the Philadelphia Eagles were favored to beat.
“I think you draw on the positives,” Kelly said Friday afternoon. “You know, what did you do well? And then look at what correctable mistakes occurred in the game and address them. That's what I talked about in the locker room after the game with our guys.”
But Kelly’s belief in what he’s selling isn’t the issue. It’s whether his players believe in it, too. We talked about that in the affirmative after the Eagles’ breathtaking debut at Washington on Sept. 9. If actual on-field success had the players buying in, what effect do two bad losses have on them?
One of the best dramas in the National Football League comes tonight: Chiefs versus Eagles. Andy Reid gets fired, gets a new job in, like, 2 minutes. Andy Reid returns to Philly, like, 2 days after getting fired. Andy Reid, going in: two-and-oh, baby. Will Andy Reid & Co. go three-and-oh tonight against his old team?
Andy Reid's former players sound off with praises for him:
"Andy Reid is a man who will go down in history, in my book, as one of the greatest coaches of all time and one of the greatest men I've ever met," [Michael] Vick said.
"There are so many good things I could say about him," [LeSean] McCoy said. "Excellent person. I think people don't really realize how good of a person he really was. ... We definitely miss him, but I mean, it's football. It's a business."
"Coach Reid is a father figure to me," said [DeSean] Jackson, who was once suspended by Reid for a game for breaking team rules. "He's a great guy, and we've been keeping in contact throughout the offseason and the preseason. He texted me after last week's game, so it's going to be great to see him come back."
SI Andrew Perloff and Don Banks talk Eagles loss in Week 2 football. But how will Chip Kelly & Co. do against Andy Reid & Co. tonight to begin Week 3? Let's get in front of the TV.
Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!
The Bulls Charge posted this on the Google+ Chicago Bulls Fans community:
NEW COLUMN: Contract Talks with Luol Deng have stalled and he says he will go through the free agency process next year. Here are my thoughts on the whole situation: Contract Talks With Luol Deng Have Stalled.
He (I assume TBC is a he) and I had quite an exchange last week:
I really like Luol, too, but so many things are working against him now, as you point out: for me, the biggest being the rising (and lower cost) talent of Butler. It is a good decision for Forman to wait and for Deng to test the market. Would Deng stay with the Bulls for a 'hometown discount' (hmm)?
That's the polarizing thing. I would think that yes, he would stay, but he seems adamant to get his money. Isn't this the time in most guys' careers they sacrifice for the team to get a ring?
Yeah, you're right. Right now, it seems the Luol camp is reacting to Bulls' position, and they're at odds with one another. But let's see how the season goes, and how Luol plays. Thibs is really high on him, so maybe he'll have an influence on his decision to stay.
The Bulls will be a much better team this year, of course, with Derrick back and Dunleavy at the arc. But I just don't see them beating the Heat or even the Pacers for the East title. LeBron will continue to elevate his game, for sure, but if Wade keeps hobbling on his knees, then the Bulls may have a chance. The Bulls have got the Heat's number during the regular season the last three years, but they don't have enough to beat them in a playoff series.
I think this is going to be the most dynamic offense of the Thibs era, but I also showed some (to me) shocking statistics about the Pacers. They had a worse FG% than the Bulls last year. Imagine that! I'm not 100% sold on the Pacers, but I agree they can be a threat. Granger is on bad knees now, Scola is a defensive threat, and CJ Watson won't move the needle much. I'm still more concerned with Miami. I believe we're better than Indiana for sure and all the rest of the East.
Good article! Derrick has a lot of questions hanging over him, and we all have to wait until the season opener for him to begin answering them. We can expect the Thibodeau offense to remain largely predicated on defense (e.g., offensive rebounds, for easy second-chance points). But my sense is that he's learning the offensive game better (e.g., drawing on Nate's fearless shooting). So, I agree with you, we should see better offensive numbers and maybe even better point-differentials.
I don't follow the Pacers, but they sure gave the Heat a run for their money deep in the playoffs last year. If I recall correctly, Frank Vogel made some play-calling mistakes that cost them one or two games. Also, I believe they have height and athleticism, which make them a difficult matchup for the Heat and any other team (even with the poor shooting). Let's see what kind of improvements they will make.
As for the Heat, if the Bulls can keep their relative domination during the regular season, then here's what I'm thinking, going into the 2014 playoffs: Thibodeau will have had four full seasons, plus two playoff series to study up on how to outcoach Spoelstra. We already know Thibodeau is very smart and competitive. So if the Bulls have a solid, healthy regular season (maybe a 57-win campaign), then watch out: They'll be gunning for the Heat in the East!
Absolutely agree with everything you said. Well put. The Pacers stats were astonishing to me. We want to put them on the pedestal for the run they gave Miami last year and their "improvements" of Luis Scola, Granger and his bad knees, and CJ Watson aren't bad, but they aren't enormous. But we need to remember the East was relatively weak last year. There was a lot of questions about who would emerge as the second best team. The Pacers finally did, but it was literally up for grabs. I think the Bulls and the Heat should be the heavy favorites for the Eastern Finals this season. I think the Bulls have made some savvy moves to improve this team since 2012 and should be the best Thibodeau-era team to date. They're literally 8 deep and possibly 9 or 10 depending on Teague's development and Snell's opportunities. We finally have a complete starting 5 with Butler at SG and a solid bench with Taj, Kirk, and Dunleavy. I'm really excited for this season.
I've been focusing mostly on the Bears and the Hawks, but, man, you got me convinced and excited about the Bulls, too!
I read your article "The Tom Thibodeau," and no question about it, he's the best coach the Bulls have said, since the Zen Master, of course. Winning Coach-of-the-Year in his rookie season was amazing confirmation of how great he was. Plus, the 7-game series against the Nets was sublime. But I have a question for you: Is he going to manage minutes-per-game better this year?
There were a lot of injuries in this second season (2011-2012) - when Derrick missed a third of the games, and of course went down hard in the first playoff game; and there were a lot of injuries late in the season and playoffs last year.
I am concerned that (a) he wears down his players and (b) his training staff aren't doing all the right things. What do you think?
Glad I could get you excited! It should be an awesome year.
Everything you brought up are all the question marks Bulls fans should be worried about. Here's my hunch: Management has probably talked to him about it and I'm sure Thibs, being as smart as he is, has considered it. He's going to have to rely on his bench more. That will be a given. I think in particular Rose and Deng will see less action and hover around the 35-36 minute mark and Noah will be around 30 per game.
As far as the training staff, they just made a hire for a new physical therapist. I know very little about her, but it seems that the Bulls organization is taking that into account. I think we'll see a much healthier season this year and I think Rose will be back to his healthy self as well. The 2011-12 season was brutal on everyone, but Rose/Thibs demand so much that it was a given he was going to shatter eventually with the condensed schedule. I expect our health to be good this year.
Man, that's great info you provide! Good news, all around.
Appreciate the compliment!
Seriously, man, I've got your site bookmarked, so I can study up on the Bulls!
Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!
