Sports

Never Give Up

Featured image You can learn lessons from sports. Like, no matter how bleak things look, you should never give up. Never. Today the Minnesota Vikings notched the biggest comeback in the history of the NFL, coming back from a 33-0 deficit at halftime to win in overtime, 39-36. I watched the first part of the game on television. For the Vikings it was a disaster–a long kickoff return by the Colts, a »

Not liking it

Featured image I literally liked Elon Musk’s mockery of the trans madness along with his disrespect of public health wrecking ball Anthony Fauci in the tweet below. I therefore served it up as a “Thought of the day” via Twitter’s embed function on Monday. My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022 Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert is one of the more than 1,000,000 Twitter users who “liked” Musk’s »

Tyler Adams scores

Featured image I gather that was quite the press conference held by US Men’s National Soccer Team coach Gregg Berhalter and captain Tyler Adams in Doha today before the team’s with Iran tomorrow. The state-approved reporter from Iran had what he thought was an important point or two to make while the regime back home is slaughtering innocents and repressing citizens. Soccer isn’t my sport but I would like to say Tyler »

Respect!

Featured image Being in England during the World Cup is interesting. It is a relatively minor sports event in the U.S., but, obviously, not here. A couple of days ago I pulled into a gas station in the Cotswolds to gas up our rental car. I pumped the gas and went inside the station to pay. There was a middle-aged guy at the cash register; he looked at the American Experiment quarter-zip »

Persecution and the art of protest

Featured image I admire the bravery and support the cause of the Iranian players competing in the FIFA World Cup competition in Doha, Qatar. The AP reports: “Iran’s players didn’t sing their national anthem and didn’t celebrate their goals.” Their silence speaks. The players are putting themselves on the line for a cause that is a matter of life, death, and basic human rights back home. It’s not exactly akin to taking »

The Daily Chart: The Babe Is Still King

Featured image Since the World Series is starting tomorrow, it’s a good time to look at the all-time MLB home run list, which lists not just the number of dingers but the total number of at-bats each slugger had to accumulate their total. If you go by dingers-per-at-bats, Mark McGwire looks to have the most prodigious home-run rate, but I insist that he (and Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa) deserve to be »

The Paranormal, Kirby Puckett, and Me

Featured image Do you remember where you were on October 26, 1991, 31 years ago today? Probably not. But I do. I was in Munich, on business, arriving that day from London. But let’s back up. The Minnesota Twins were in the World Series that year against the Atlanta Braves. I was part of a consortium that had season tickets to Twins games. We had bought in when tickets were easy to »

The (putative) booing of Dr. Jill [updated]

Featured image Congress is adjourned. Members up for reelection are home campaigning in advance of elections next month. We are left reading omens and tea leaves. Anything but the Star Tribune! The Star Tribune has gone into full campaign mode on behalf of the DFL. Please see my related comments in “The real fake news.” Looking for a bona fide tea leaf to read, I noted that Dr. Jill Biden attended last »

Inoki down for the count

Featured image The Associated Press reports that Japanese wrestler and politician Antonio Inoki has died at the age of 79. I was a high school teacher who paid good money to attend his whatever-it-was with Muhammad Ali televised live from Tokyo’s Budokan over closed circuit at the Minneapolis Auditorium in June 1976. Inoki contended with Ali during most of the 15 rounds by kicking him while positioned on his back. Ali taunted »

Buckeye blind

Featured image Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan is a 25-carat phony “moderate.” He had the luxury of running a general election style campaign through the primary season, so he has had the time to perfect his act. In just the past two years, however, “he’s voted to federalize elections, admit Washington, D.C., as the 51st state, impose onerous new background check requirements on gun owners, and grant mass amnesty to millions »

Time For Equal Expectations

Featured image Two stories in the news strike a common chord: the need to stop infantilizing minority, especially black, populations. The first comes from the world of sports and involves the familiar racial hate incident hoax. Briefly, the Duke women’s volleyball team played a match at Brigham Young University, and lost. After the match, the godmother of one of the Duke players, who is black, tweeted that someone in the BYU crowd »

Robert Reich vs Dave Chappelle on Economics (& Common Sense)

Featured image As you may have heard, Robert Reich, who increasingly looks like a parody of an old man yelling at clouds, is very concerned about equality. Very very concerned. Almost obsessively concerned. Actually, strike “almost” from the previous sentence. His egalitarianism extends to the WNBA. Reich finds it scandalous that WNBA players aren’t paid the same as NBA players. Never mind getting schooled by any libertarian walking down the street, as »

The Decline of the West in One Fight Song

Featured image As you know, the NFL’s “Washington Football Team” finally settled on a new team name: the “Commanders.” I wonder how many focus groups it took to settle on this. Was it harder than coming up with “Oklahoma is OK”? Is “Commanders” really a good name for a city whose commands to the populace are increasingly resented? (It might help if the team had a commanding record to boast about in »

Worst Sports Story of the Year

Featured image Sensible nominations for the worst recent developments/scandals in sports would surely include the universal designated hitter in MLB, or the runner-on-second-base-in-extra-innings innovation, the continued employment of Angel Hernandez anywhere near a baseball field, or the defenestration of Jack Del Rio for the sin of speaking common sense. But these would all be wrong. The worst sports story of the moment is the LA Dodgers’ suppression of the sportscraft of Roger »

Edmund Burke for College Football Czar

Featured image Following Edmund Burke’s adage (which was actually first said by Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland, in a speech in the House of Commons on 1641, but it is thoroughly Burkean) that “If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change,” we can draw a straight line from this week’s ridiculous decision for USC and UCLA to join the Big Ten to the ruinous decision to institute »

Sports Desk: “Winning Time,” Losing Tone?

Featured image As someone who grew up in LA when the Lakers reached their first pinnacle with the great Jerry West/Wilt Chamberlain team that won a record 33 games in a row in the 1971-72 season (by an average margin of 17 points a game), and then to be around for the rise of the “Showtime” Lakers with the arrival of Magic Johnson in 1980, I have been looking forward to the »

Amar’e leaves the Nets

Featured image The Brooklyn Nets came to town to play the Minnesota Timberwolves on January 23. We were in the middle of a below-zero cold snap that did not deter Nets assistant coach Amar’e Stoudemire from seeking out morning services at an Orthodox synagogue in St. Louis Park away from his downtown hotel. He obviously wasn’t just going through the motions. Catching sight of the tall guy at services, my teacher Rabbi »