I hope all (any?) faithful readers of this space will forgive my absence last week.
I was on vacation, a good chunk of which was spent in a Honda, driving between Massachusetts and North Carolina. If you haven't made this journey, let me share with you the most excruciating part. As you head down Interstate 84 out of New York, you slowly lose contact with the Big Apple's variety of options on the dial and enter what I like to call Radio Free Pennsylvania.
Oh, there are stations. But all of them fit into one of three hideous categories:
- The first is country. Alas, poor readers, I don't know enough about this genre to give it the lambasting it truly deserves. Suffice it to say, my fiancee and I weren't doing any achy braking if we saw a cop in the distance.
- The second broad category is the "Top 40" stations. The play lists on these stations is so sanitized, it almost made up for the absence of paper towels and soap we encountered in the restrooms at the Sunoco in Port Jervis.
Now, I haven't stayed current with Casey Kasem, but apparently these days there are only four songs in the Top 40. I guess Casey just plays them each 10 times on Sunday morning and calls it a show.
All I know is that by the end of the drive, I "truly, madly, deeply" had the urge to take a chainsaw to each and every member of Savage Garden. (And if the Backstreet Boys tried to run to their rescue, well, that'd just be a little bonus, now wouldn't it?)
(How big of a misnomer is "Savage Garden," anyway? I hear that name and I'm thinking I'm getting a Stone Temple Pilots cover band, at the very least. Anything but these wusses.)
- The final type of station promises to play "the best of the 70's, 80's and 90's." This adds exactly three more songs to the playlist.
Memo to programmers of these stations: Jack and Diane aren't sucking on chili dogs outside the Tasty Freeze anymore. They're trying to put their kids through college while keeping up with the third mortgage on their little pink house. Okay?
All right, all right, enough venting. Let's talk sports.
ALL-STAR THOUGHTS: You know I can't let the snub of Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra pass without a mention.
Inviting Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter to Colorado without the third member
of the American League's shortstop triumverate would be like holding the Oscars and inviting Matt but not Ben, or holding the MTV Awards and opening
the door at the MTV Music Awards for K-Ci but slamming it in the face of Jo-Jo.
I'm not going to dis Omar Visquel at the expense of Nomar. Visquel is truly
a defensive whiz, and I suppose with the aforementioned trio around, all of
which are 25 or younger, he might have gone his entire career without an All-Star patch on his uniform had Indians' manager Mike Hargrove not given
him the nod.
But A-Rod, Nomar and Jeter may just be three of the top five players in the
American League at any position. You say you can't have four shortstops on
one team at the All-Star Game? I say hogwash.
The outfielders at the Mid-Summer Classic play out of position all the time.
(Natural centerfielders Ken Griffey and Kenny Lofton played "Paper, Rock,
Scissors" to decide who would have to shift to left. As he did in the home
run contest the day before, Griffey won.)
Nomar could have done likewise. Leave Ray Durham behind and have a Jeter-Garciaparra double-play combo. Lop off Manny Ramirez or Paul O'Neill
and let Nomar shag a fly or two. However you want to do it. But Garciaparra
should have been there.
A VOTE FOR ANARCHY: It's always amusing to look at the final All-Star fans voting and look at the anomalies. Most years, votes pour in for guys who tore a knee ligament in spring training or who have retired.
My favorite this year were the thousands who cast their votes at AL shortstop for Kansas City's Felix Martinez. Martinez' "credentials"? Let's see. While turning a double play, Martinez kicked (most feel intentionally) a sliding Otis Nixon in the face, breaking Nixon's jaw.
Not too much later in the season, a bench-clearing incident between the Royals and Angels was simmering down when Martinez sucker-punched Anaheim's Frank Bolick. Soon, every one connected with the Angels, from the manager on down to the mascot was trying to get a piece of Martinez. Martinez has been banished to Kansas City's Omaha-based minor league affiliate ever since.
You could attribute Martinez' vote total, which exceeded that of solid citizen and ballplayer Pat Meares of Minnesota, to confused fans who thought
they were voting for one of baseball's more deserving Martinez', like Pedro,
Edgar or Tino.
I prefer to think that there was a grass roots movement among fans to plant
Felix the Time Bomb at Coors Field, hoping to incite the All-Star Game's first brawl as revenge for years of bad treatment by baseball's owners and
players alike. Maybe next year...
THE WE'RE-GONNA-GET-CREAMED TEAM: I never really got into any of basketball's "Dream Teams" that obliterated all opposition on their way to international gold.
Rooting for a team led by Magic and Larry against countries just learning
how to play basketball somehow felt like cheering the armed hunter in his
"matchup" against the deer, or backing, well, just about any civilized nation
against the U.S. in soccer.
But oh, has the NBA lockout caused the pendulum to swing in the other direction.
A team led by Grant Hill, Gary Payton and Kevin Garnett had already been
selected to head to Athens and would have likely cruised to the gold medal
and an automatic berth in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. While USA Basketball and the NBA are two different entities, the "real" players did not want to shill for the league at the world championships before a new labor agreement is reached. USA Basketball disinvited them and went hunting for other guys who could bounce a ball and put it through a hoop.
Here's a sampling from the list of 30 players from which the Red, White and
Blue's contingent at the upcoming world championships will be culled: Acie
Earl, Tim Kempton, David Wood, Ashraf Amaya, Tim Breaux, Evan Eschmeyer, Mateen Cleaves.
Breathtaking, isn't it?
Somehow I see McDonald's taking a pass on printing up Tim Kempton commemorative cups.
PAK-ED WITH TALENT: Sports Illustrated reports that by the time 20-year-old United States Women's Open Champion Se Ri Pak tied for first at last fall's LPGA qualifying school, she was already "known throughout Asia as the female Tiger Woods."
Let's see. Pak is 20. Woods is 22. Pak has two major championships (she led
the McDonald's LPGA Championships from start to finish two months ago and
bested Duke's Jenny Chuasiriporn, also 20, in a 20-hole playoff at the Open).
Woods has only the green jacket he won at the Masters in 1997.
Seems like the folks in Asia got it wrong. Forgive me, Eldrick. But it seems the only thing you've got over Pak is the large stack of dough you get for wearing swooshes. Until you can bring home some more hardware, I'll be forced to refer to you as "the male Se Ri Pak."
[Because of our deadline for tonight's Edition, K.O. did indeed miss the call. We're sure he's pouring wine for some particularly haughty Frenchmen, even as you read this. ---Ed.]
WORLD CUP PICK: By the time you read this, the World Cup final will probably be over. I'm fully expecting a Brazilian victory (let's say 2-nil), but I'll be rooting for the French.
Why?
Superior post-goal celebrations.
My favorite was the one France's Lilian Thuram performed after his second
score in his team's 2-1 win over Croatia in the semifinals. In case you missed it, Thuram, while kneeling on the ground, brought hand to chin as if to say, "Hmmm... I think someone may have scored. I just don't know who it could have been. Let me think.... Oh yeah, now I remember... IT WAS ME!"
Beats a Alonzo Mourning/Shawn Kemp crotch grab any day.
Thanks for reading to the bottom.
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