14.10.03
College Football: Quick note about the above Zuerst. Another Mea culpa: I was wrong to refer to the former Army coach (and current Jets linebackers coach) Bob Sutton as "Don". I'm embarrassed that I confused the very good ex-coach of Army with the Hall of Fame pitcher, and current mulleted colour man for the Braves. *sigh*. On a related note, Army has a very good chance to pick up its first win of the year: they host East Carolina, which has played as badly as or worse than Army.
Baseball: I haven't been a fan of major league baseball since the strike in the mid '90s. I have followed the Tigers for years: the first game I saw when I got back from Japan in the summer of 1986 was the Tigers beating up on the Twins 12-2, with (I think) Kirk Gibson hitting a grand slam. I saw this in Tiger Stadium, and fell in love with the place, even if men peed in troughs (this is a problem in several old stadia, and some newer ones; Lane Stadium, which will turn 40 in a couple of years, suffers from this problem) and support pillars blocked sight lines. While I was glad to see the Lions move into Detroit from Pontiac, some 20 miles north, I was dismayed that the Tigers moved out of venerable Tiger Stadium. And I am angry as hell that Mike Ilitch hasn't shown anything resembling the commitment that he shows to the Red Wings (for whom I root when they aren't playing the Caps). I am also a fan of the Reds; much of my father's extended family is in Ohio, and, wherever they are (with maybe the exception of my aunt Ann), they are all Reds fans.
Why am I bringing this up, you say? I have recently been drawn in by playoff baseball. I will watch most playoffs; the intensity and desperation that playoff competition brings is enough to keep me watching, because great teams elevate their game. It's enough, even, to get me to watch the (very) occasional NBA game. Add to playoffs the spectre of a rivalry series, and you have some great competition. And, occasionally (and this is especially true of hockey) playoff confrontations breed rivalries and hatred; this is how the Detroit-Colorado blood feud got its start.
At this point I'm conversationally meandering. What I mean to say is this: right now it looks like a Yanks-Cubs series, with both of those teams needing one win in two home games. And I'm watching it.
Pro Football: My picks are up. But I'm not sure that you can see them, because they don't display on my browsers unless I'm signed in. I guess Pigskin doesn't display entries until they're locked at noon on gameday. I'll tell you who I picked when I do my blurb on Friday.
If I hadn't made a dumb error yesterday, my Zuerst would have read something like this:
Warren Sapp: racist, idiot, both, or neither?
Couple of things: On the James Brown Show, Warren Sapp said, in the wake of the Rush Limbaugh scandal, that there are "way more scrubs in this game that are Anglos that are being pumped up than there are blacks, trust me, it's not even close". This after saying that ESPN shouldn't have accepted Limbaugh's resignation, that they should have fired the man. I wonder if he caught the irony of those statements. Later, when LaVar Arrington called him out and told him not to run through the Redskins' pregame formation, Sapp complained about Arrington "snitching to the slave masters", perhaps implying that either (a) Arrington or, more likely, (b) the NFL office thought that slavery was a good thing. And, considering that he's making several million dollars a year, I wonder if he sees the irony of that comment.
So do these comments make Sapp a racist? Deep down, I don't think so. His comments are, undoubtedly, as (or more) racist than Limbaugh's comments. But I think that these comments are indicative of his personality, much like the running through the other teams' warmup formations are indicative: they point to a self-centredness glory seeker. I think that he said them to get attention (even negative), and get the focus back on that fatass #99. My verdict is that, while his comment was, perhaps, racist, he's not a racist deep down. He's just a selfish idiot.
Zuletzt: My Zuerst makes two references: the first, to my error yesterday. I have already dealt with that. You may have caught the other if you lived in Virginia (as I did, and indeed, still do) in 1996. That year, the race for one of our two U.S. Senate seats was between the Republican incumbent (who won the race) John W. Warner, and the Democratic challenger (who lost the race, but won the governorship in 2001) Mark R. Warner. Mark's campaign had some bumper stickers printed up (some of which you can still see in Virginia's more liberal enclaves) that said "Marknotjohn". Just a bit of political (recent) history.
More later - R.
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