Sports
June 2, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
When people ask me to name my favorite athlete of all time, I give two names: Wes Unseld and Sonny Jurgensen. If pressed, I go with Big Wes because he delivered a championship to Washington, D.C. and because of what he meant to the community off the court. Unseld died today at the age of 74. The cause of death was “complications from pneumonia.” You have to be really old
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May 27, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, the National Hockey League presented to the public its plan, approved by the players, for completing the season. The NHL intends to go straight to a 24 team playoff to be held in two venues (not selected yet). It’s not certain that the NHL will be able to pull this off, but at least it has a plan in place. The National Basketball Association wants to complete its season
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March 30, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The Justice Department has filed a statement of interest in a case challenging a Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) policy that enables biological males to compete against biological females. Attorney General Barr explained: In our pluralistic society we generally try to accommodate how individuals desire to live their lives up to the point where those desires impinge on the other people’s rights. Allowing biological males to compete in all-female sports
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March 14, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
For a while, it looked like major sports leagues and tournaments would proceed despite the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, but with no fans admitted. This plan ended when players, coaches, and referees were found to have been infected by the virus. I did watch one German soccer match played without fans. It was a Rhine derby between arch rivals Borussia Mönchengladbach and FC Köln (Cologne). Fans called this a “ghost match”
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February 16, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
For me, the word “thug” brings to mind Richard Widmark in “Kiss of Death” and Jack Lambert in “The Killers” — both of them extremely white. However, African-American race mongers have decided that “thug” is a modern-day racial epithet. This isn’t what one would call self-flattery, but I guess it’s good for the grievance business. The latest such grievance is with West Virginia’s governor, Jim Justice. He coaches girls’ basketball
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February 3, 2020 — Scott Johnson
I haven’t thought about Hunter Thompson or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in a long time, but I thought about both while watching the Super Bowl halftime show yesterday. I was thinking of this quote from Thompson’s classic: “The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the sixth Reich. The ground floor is full of
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January 22, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Margaret Court is the greatest Australian female tennis player ever. In fact, she’s one of the very best female tennis players ever from any country, having won more Grand Slam singles titles than any other woman. Fifty years ago, Court accomplished one the most remarkable feats ever in women’s tennis — a calendar year “grand slam.” In other words, she won the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the
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January 19, 2020 — Steven Hayward
While we await the start of today’s conference championship games, I came across a story from a few months back that just makes you want to stand up and salute our armed forces even more than usual: US troops drink Iceland capital’s entire beer supply in one weekend More than 6,000 soldiers were in Reykjavik for four days participating in the Trident Juncture 18 – a NATO-led military exercise. After their drills, the
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January 14, 2020 — Scott Johnson
President and Mrs. Trump attended the LSU-Clemson national championship football game at the Superdome in New Orleans last night. LSU prevailed 42-25 to complete its historic season. The crowd roared when President and Mrs. Trump were announced. White House social media director Dan Scavino tweeted the video below. President Trump and First Lady Melania attend the #NationalChampionship at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana…. pic.twitter.com/zsS8ofdhNi — Dan Scavino (@DanScavino)
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November 16, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Paul noted a couple days ago the very public “workout” publicity stunt of Colin Kaepernick, which was scheduled to go off at 3 pm eastern time today at Atlanta Falcons stadium. But suddenly this morning Kaepernick complained that the media were being overly restricted, and suddenly moved the event to a local high school and delayed the start time. ESPN reported about an hour ago: Colin Kaepernick’s NFL workout is
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November 11, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Catching up with my accumulated hard copies of the Wall Street Journal over the weekend I came across Elizabeth Winkler’s excellent profile “Boston Celtic Enes Kanter Calls Foul on Repression in Turkey.” Subhead: “The outspoken NBA center has been labeled a ‘terrorist’ by his native country’s government for his association with an exiled cleric.” His family is trapped in Turkey and he has had to disavow them as they have
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October 13, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Americans may be ill-informed about many things, but they know a lot about sports. So, ironically, it could be the NBA’s enforcement of Red China’s strictures on unapproved speech that, more than anything else, educates Americans on the nature of the Chinese regime. This happened on Wednesday, but I just saw it via InstaPundit. At an exhibition game between the Washington Wizards and the Guangzhou Long Lions at Capital One
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October 7, 2019 — Scott Johnson
I learn from the 10-point guide to today’s Wall Street Journal by Matt Murray that “The NBA’s carefully plotted strategic emphasis on China was jolted off course by a tweet Friday night” (WSJ story posted here). Murray’s email newsletter condenses the WSJ story: The league scrambled to contain an escalating crisis in China after Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted support for Hong Kong’s mass protests against Beijing’s authoritarian
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September 6, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump honored NBA basketball legend Jerry West by awarding him the Medal of Freedom. If athletes are to be given this award, and presidents from both parties have done so, then West clearly deserves it. West is underappreciated. When folks talk these days about great guards of the 1960s, the focus is always on Oscar Robertson. Robertson is an all-time great, but so is West. He averaged 27.0 points
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August 21, 2019 — Scott Johnson
The Cleveland Indians are in an intense divisional race with our Minnesota Twins. The Indians seem to have helped themselves by adding right fielder Yasiel Puig to their roster. Puig is a recently acquired power hitter who solidifies the middle of the Indians’ lineup. Having come over to the Reds after six years with the Dodgers, Puig was traded again to the Indians in a three-team deal just before the
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July 20, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
For years, ESPN indulged in left-wing politics. I wrote about this here and here. But John Skipper, under whose direction ESPN took this unfortunate turn, is no longer running the network. It turned out that he had an addiction problem. Also, ESPN was hurting financially. ESPN’s new head, Jimmy Pitaro, issued a directive — stop doing politics. To my knowledge, it has been followed. Earlier this week, however, an ESPN
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July 6, 2019 — Scott Johnson
We waited out the rain in Minneapolis to watch the Twins play the Rangers at Target Field last night. Getting into the stadium was a miserable experience. We stood in the rain in a line with no visible movement for over half an hour to make it into the stadium. Once the game got underway, however, the Twins made it worth the wait. They beat the Rangers 15-6 and played
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