Pioneers

While writing my last post, I came to a fork in the road. I chose to go down one path with the intention of coming back to the other path later in the post. That didn't happen. Here is the other path.

Devante SmithPelly, the Washington Capitals ice hockey player who was racially taunted by Chicago Blackhawks fans last week, follows a long line of professional athletes who have found themselves among a small handful of black players in their sport, and as a result. suffered indignities at the hands of fans and fellow players.

Much has been written about the abuses that Jackie Robinson endured after he became the first African American to play “organized" baseball since blacks were excluded from the game in the 1880s. His story and career, have become the stuff of legend. Less well known are the stories of the players who followed him into the majors, some of which I wrote about here. Even less known are the pioneers who became the first African American players in the other American professional sports leagues.

Kenny Washington

Like Major League Baseball, the National Football League originally featured black players until a "gentleman's agreement" was forged between owners to keep them out.  Kenny Washington, was a teammate of Jackie Robinson at UCLA on both that school's football and baseball teams. While there, Washington set several school rushing, passing, and defensive records (as players played both sides of the ball in those days), as well as being the first consensus All American from UCLA. He was considered by some to have been a superior baseball player to Robinson. So impressed by his abilities, George Halas, owner and head coach of the NFL Chicago Bears, tried to draft Washington after he graduated from UCLA in 1940, but was thwarted from doing so by the rest of the league. Washington languished in the semi-pro Pacific Coast Professional Football League from 1941 until 1945, playing most of his prime years in minor league football. When the Cleveland Rams moved to Los Angeles in 1946 and expressed interest in playing in the publicly owned LA Coliseum, overwhelming pressure from the municipality convinced the team to integrate, which they did, signing Washington on March 21 , 1946, exactly one year before Jackie Robinson became a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Jackie Robinson famously endured both verbal and physical abuse from fans and his fellow players and so did Washington. But as a football player, one can only imagine that the physical abuse from players had to be far more savage. Unlike Robinson, Washington's career in the big leagues was short lived. With five knee surgeries behind him and already past his prime when he entered the league, Washington played three seasons in the NFL, putting up impressive, but not Hall of Fame stats, which is why he isn't enshrined in the sport's shrine of immortals in Canton, Ohio. Still, Kenny Washington's contribution to the game of professional is unquestionable and he is deserving of much greater recognition. There is a movement underway to include him in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but given his record on the field in the league, that seems unlikely. It would be interesting to poll current players in the NFL, a league now dominated by black athletes, to see how many of them know the name Kenny Washington. My guess is that few of them do.

There isn't a long history of segregation in the National Basketball Association only because the league wasn't founded until 1949. Unlike this country's three other major professional sports, baseball, football and hockey, (sorry soccer fans), the origin of the game of basketball can be traced to a particular moment and to a single inventor.

Time now for a brief interlude...

In 1891, PE teacher James Naismith of the Springfield, Mass. YMCA was given the task of creating a new activity to distract his bored and rowdy track and field athletes during the cold New England winter months. His boss, the head of that particular Y, had a few requirements for the activity: it had to keep the athletes in shape, it could not not take up too much space, and it especially had to be "fair for all players and not be too rough."

The new activity would be a goal-oriented game like football and hockey. To make it fair and not too rough, Naismith placed the goals, originally peach baskets, high up above the players' heads so they would be unguardable. There also was no running with the ball, it was advanced by passing it from player to player. Goals were scored by players successfully soft-tossing the ball (originally a soccer ball) into the appropriate basket without it coming out. Upon a successful score, the janitor present at the game, had to walk up to the basket then climb a ladder to fetch the ball. Following that, a "jump ball" at center court would resume the action, if you could call it that, Contrary to what you might have expected, no, the new game was not called "watching paint dry", but Basket Ball. You may think that the greatest innovation in the game of basketball was the jump shot or the slam dunk, but I give that award to the guy who decided it would be a good idea to cut a hole in the bottom of the baskets.

Here is an interesting site devoted to the evolution of basketball.

Anyway, Naismith's game was a big hit, first on the YMCA circuit, then at schools and universities, before finally turning professional . It was played by folks of all races, and evolved as most things did back in those days, in the parallel universes of segregation. But unlike baseball where white teams played black teams only in exhibition games, officially sanctioned games and even championships were held between white and black basketball teams.

One of those all black teams was the Harlem Globetrotters which began as a legitimate barnstorming team, not the circus act they would later become, and not as the team's name implies, from New York City, but from Chicago. In 1948 the Globetrotters took on the all white Minneapolis Lakers (today's LA Lakers), and the man many considered to be the game's first superstar, 6'10" George Mikan. The game took place here in Chicago at the old Chicago Stadium. The Lakers had their way with the Globetrotters in the first half, but the combination of double-teaming Mikan, and a consistent fast-break offense in the second half brought the Trotters back. The lead went back and forth in the second half and with the game tied at 59 with 90 seconds left in regulation time, Marques Haynes eluded the Laker defense all by himself, dribbling the ball until there were two seconds left on the clock. At that point he passed the ball to Elmer Robinson for a perfect 30 foot set shot to win the game at the buzzer.

While it was only an exhibition game, the Globetrotters beating a team that greatly out-sized them put to rest for good the notion that black basketball players were inferior to whites. It had the same impact to African Americans as Jesse Owens winning the gold medal at the 1936 Olympics, Joe Louis beating Max Schmeling in the first round of their second fight in 1938, and of course, Jackie Robinson joining the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Chuck Cooper

In 1949, the year after the Globetrotters' victory over the Lakers, the Basketball Association of America, the league the Lakers belonged to, merged with its rival, the National Basketball League, to form the National Basketball Association. The NBA would remain all white for exactly one year.

Settling on on the true Jackie Robinson of the NBA is a little complicated as there were actually three of them. From the 1950-51 season overview in NBA.com's encyclopedia, we learn this:

The season marked the first appearance of black players in the league. Chuck Cooper became the first black player to be drafted when he was chosen by Boston; Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton became the first to sign an NBA contract when he signed with New York, and Earl Lloyd became the first to play in an NBA regular-season game because the schedule had his Washington team opening one day before the others.

To further muddy the waters, one of the NBA's predecessors, the NBL, became integrated for a short time in the early forties during World War. II.* Unfortunately during a game, a fight broke out between black and white players, marking the end of that noble experiment.

Bringing up the rear as far as professional American sports leagues are concerned, the National Hockey League finally broke its color barrier with Frederickton, New Brunswick's own, Willie O'Ree, who broke in with the Boston Bruins to replace an injured player on January 18, 1958 for  a game in Montreal. 

There was little fanfare for O'Ree's debut. Eleven years earlier, Jackie Robinson was carefully groomed for the role he was about to be thrust into by his mentor Branch Rickey. Not O'Ree. His coach with the Bruins,  Mike Schmidt, while acknowledging the milestone, and assuring O'Ree that his teammates were all on board, told him in typical understated hockeyspeak, to put that all behind him and "just go out there and play hockey."

Willie O'Ree

O'Ree played only two games with the Bruins in 1958 before going back down to the minors. He was called back up two seasons later and played 43 games with the club. Like the other Jackie Robinsons of their respective sports, O'Ree received more than his share of racist taunts from the fans and the opposing players."Players would take cheap shots at me, just to see if I would retaliate..." O'Ree said, "...They thought I didn’t belong there. When I got the chance, I’d run right back at them."

Jackie Robinson was told by Branch Rickey that under no circumstances was he to retaliate when another player went after him, so as not to set back the cause of integration. For better or worse, fighting is an integral part of the game of hockey, at least as it is played in North America, and O'Ree was given the green light to not turn the other cheek. The worst cheap shot taken at O'Ree was right here in Chicago when my onetime hero Eric Nesterenko of the Black Hawks (as the name of the team was spelled at the time) verbally taunted O'Ree then speared him with his stick to the face, knocking out two teeth. O'Ree's stick then managed to find Nesterenko's head, setting off a bench clearing brawl. It took fifteen stitches to sew up Nesterenko's bloody head. Being hockey I have no doubt that after their penalties, both players barely missed a shift. O'Ree, a very popular player among his teammates, didn't need to fight all his battles. When opposing players would taunt or take a run at him, they had to answer to the enforcers on his team, namely Fern Flaman and Leo Labine.

While the rules of hockey allow retaliation against fellow players, the fans are another story.  O'Ree said the treatment by opposing fans was worse in the American NHL cities than in Montreal or Toronto. It seems the worst city of all, sad to say, was Chicago. "Why don't you go down south where you belong and pick some cotton" was probably one of the tamer remarks hurled in his direction. He was pelted with garbage while serving time in the penalty box but he never fought back. He said: "If I’m going to leave the league, it’s because I don’t have the skills or the ability to play anymore. I’m not going to leave it ’cause some guy makes a threat or tries to get me off my game by making racial remarks towards me."

After that 1960-61 season, (the season the Black Hawks won the Stanley Cup), O'Ree was traded to the Montreal Canadiens. As that team was stacked with talent, O'Ree unfortunately never played another game on NHL ice, but he did continue to play professional hockey in the minors, finally hanging up the skates for good in 1979 at the ripe age of 44.

Unlike Kenny Washington who died in 1971. Willie O'Ree lived to see the day when the contributions of pioneer black professional athletes were rediscovered and finally appreciated. In recent years, O'Ree, who is still very much with us, has received countless honors and awards including the Lester Patrick Award for outstanding service to hockey in the United States, and the Order of Canada, that nation's highest civilian award. Since 1998, Willie O'Ree has served as the director of Youth Development for the NHL/USA Hockey Diversity Task Force. As you can imagine from his job title, the goal of the organization is to promote the game of ice hockey to new audiences, especially in minority communities, and to encourage the participation of these groups in youth hockey. One might look at the numbers of black players in the NHL today (averaging out to about one player per team) as evidence that the Task Force is barely sputtering along. That is until you realize that after O'Ree's days were done in the NHL, no black player stepped on NHL ice for another thirteen years.

Hockey has indeed come a long way since the days of O'Ree's youth when, as a teenage baseball player,  he got to meet Jackie Robinson at Ebbets Field. When O'Ree mentioned that his true love was hockey, Robinson of all people responded: "I didn't know black kids played hockey."

The unfortunate taunting incident that took place in the United Center a little over a week ago, and the public's strong reaction against it, is a good indication that like hockey, society has come a long way since these pioneers broke into their respective leagues, but still has a long way to go.


* Integration was something Major League Baseball could and should have done during a time when there was a player shortage due to World War II. While the poobahs still deemed it unacceptable for blacks to play professional baseball, the majors fielded a child, sixteen year old Joe Nuxtall, and a one armed outfielder, Pete Gray during the war. That proved to be the final slap in the face for supporters of the integration of the Major Leagues which finally took place on April 15, 1947.

Ali

Quick, can you name the current world heavyweight boxing champion? I looked it up a couple days ago and still can't remember his name. When Muhammad Ali died earlier this month, I heard a radio report, probably on NPR who doesn't have a clue about these things, that said the sport of boxing was not very popular before Ali came on the scene, and returned to that state after he retired. That of course is nonsense. To some people, the NPR reporter included. Ali WAS boxing. However prize fighting as it used to be called, was second only to baseball in popularity in the US, up until the early sixties when the NFL began its meteoric rise to the top of the charts. Post-Ali, the heavyweight division of the sport continued to produce household names such as Larry Holmes, Evander Holyfield, and everyone's favorite (said with a wink and a nudge), Mike Tyson. And let us not forget the reincarnation of George Foreman who transformed himself from a sullen, brutal, one man wrecking crew, into happy-go-lucky Uncle George the Grill Man. Despite looking like a tan version of the Michelin Man whenever he stepped into the ring and despite his advanced age, Foreman could still pack enough of a wallop to become at 45, the oldest heavyweight champion of all time.

Perhaps it was that image of slow, old Uncle George plodding around the ring sending the likes of boxing immortals Terry Anderson and Ken Lakusta to the canvas, punching their one way tickets to Palookaville, that turned people away from the of battleships of boxing, the heavyweights, in favor of the swifter destroyer class of the sport's lighter weight divisions. The hype surrounding, attention given to and money generated from last year's Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao welterweight bout is evidence that the sweet science is still a major attraction around the world.

I'm old enough to remember when Muhammad Ali was still Cassius Clay, aka "the Louisville Lip", notorious for his incessant posturing and braggadocio. His trademark slogan "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" was coined well before either Ali or Clay became household names. He called himself "The Greatest" long before he could back it up.

We forget today that people hated him for it.

Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston during their re-match,   Lewistown, Maine, May 25, 1965
Photograph by Neil Leifer

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. That has to be an average number because all the pictures I've taken that have been worth only a groan or at best a "that's interesting" must certainly balance out the millions of words this Neil Leifer photograph evokes.

It is perhaps the most famous sports photograph ever made. The story behind it as well as the life and times of the two individuals in it, and the sport they excelled at, are so twisted and complex, it would take hundreds of thousands of words just to scratch the surface. 

Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. (named after his father who was named after a 19th Century Kentucky abolitionist), was already well known before the fight that made him a legend. That fight to be exact, took place in Miami Beach on February 25, 1964. By that time, Clay was an Olympic gold medal winner with a 19-0 professional record and considered the top contender for the heavyweight crown. But with several less than stellar fights up to that point, nobody gave him much of a chance to beat the formidable current champ Sonny Liston whose biographer, Paul Gallender called the most gifted heavyweight in the history of boxing. Liston was so feared that seasoned professional boxers trembled at the mention of his name.

Liston, whose style and persona were emulated by George Foreman in his first go-around. was the antithesis of Clay, especially when it came to PR. Mistrustful of anyone not in his inner circle, Liston came off as surly and belligerent with the press. They repaid him in kind by portraying him as a brutal thug, emphasizing his prison record and mob connections. The picture the white press painted of Liston was that of the stereotype ferocious Negro whom you'd cross the street in order to avoid crossing paths with him. The truth is, black folks didn't care much for him either. Liston's reputation was so bad even the NAACP got into the act recommending that previous champ Floyd Patterson not fight him because they feared a possible Liston championship would set the cause of civil rights back decades.

Patterson should have listened to them. Liston annihilated the champ, knocking him out barely two minutes into the first round. When the new champ Sonny Liston returned to his home in Philadelphia after the fight, instead of the grateful throngs he expected to greet him at the airport, he was met by only a handful of press, one of whom publicly suggested a huge ticker tape parade up Broad Street was in order, using torn up arrest warrants for confetti. Liston soon left the City of Brotherly Love for Denver saying he'd rather be a lamp post in that city than mayor of Philadelphia.

The rage that cursed through Liston's veins did not escape the attention of 22 year old Cassius Clay who signed to fight the champ in late 1963. From the get go, Clay mercilessly ragged on Liston, in public and in person. He went so far as rent a bus and displayed on it a sign that read "Liston must go in eight" (rounds). Then in the middle of the night, Clay and his friends parked the bus in front of Liston's Denver home, honking the horn and casting aspersions at the temperamental champion as he tried to sleep.

Liston dismissed Cassius Clay as a second rate fighter and a madman. He barely trained for the fight and was probably in the worst shape of his career. It is rumored that he was up all night before the fight on a drunken bender. Unbeknownst to the general public, Clay's training regime by contrast was scientific and brutally intense. He studied every inch of the champ and understood his every weakness, few of them as there were.

Also unknown to the public was a previous shoulder injury to Liston which should have been grounds to postpone the fight. That injury put him at a disadvantage as did the fact that he was far older than anyone suspected, perhaps as old as George Foreman was when he won his second championship. If that's true, and we still don't know for sure, it would have made Liston twice as old as Clay at the time of their fight. 

The young Cassius was at his most outrageous at the weigh-in the morning of the fight, acting so crazed that people thought he was trying to get out of the fight on a count of insanity. It turned out he was crazy, just like a fox. Cassius Clay knew that Sonny Liston had not fought a fight in quite a while that lasted more than a couple of rounds because of his habit of knocking out opponents before most in attendance had a chance to settle into their seats. Clay also knew that Liston more than likely would not train for a long fight. If he could make the champ angry and impatient enough, then Clay's superior foot speed and agility would enable him to evade Liston's devastating punches and tire out the champ in a long fight. He'd later say: "If Liston wasn't thinking nothing but killing me, he wasn't thinking fighting. You got to think to fight."

At the first bell it was apparent that Clay did mange to get under Liston's skin as the champ came after the challenger with a vengeance. By doing so, Liston fell right into Cassius Clay's trap.

No sport inspires more brilliant poetry and prose than boxing. This account of the first Sonny Liston-Cassius Clay fight, written by Robert Lipsyte, is an except from an article which appeared in the New York Times the day after the fight:

The fight was Clay’s from the start. The tall, swift youngster, his hands carelessly low, backed away from Liston’s jabs, circled around Liston’s dangerous left hook and opened a nasty gash under Liston’s left eye. 

He never let Liston tie him up for short, brutal body punches, and although he faltered several times, he refused to allow himself to be cornered. His long left jab kept bouncing off Liston’s face. From the beginning, it was hard to believe. 

The men had moved briskly into combat, Liston stalking, moving flat-footedly forward. He fell short with two jabs, brushed Clay back with a grazing right to the stomach and landed a solid right to the stomach. The crowd leaned forward for the imminent destruction of the young poet. 

But he hadn’t lied. All those interminable refrains of “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” had been more than foolish songs. The kid was floating. He leaned back from Liston’s jabs and hooks, backed into the ropes, then spun out and away. He moved clockwise around Liston, taunting that terrible left hook, his hands still low. 

Then he stung late in the first round, sticking his left in Liston’s face and following with a quick barrage to Liston’s head. They continued for long seconds after the bell, unable to hear the inadequate ring above the roar of the crowd...

Liston strained forward with overeager hooks that struck only air. For a moment, in the second round, Liston pummeled Clay against the ropes, but again, Cassius spun out and away.

Then the young man began to rumble as he had promised. His quick left jabs penetrated Liston’s defenses, and he followed with right hands. He leaned forward as he fired rights and lefts at Liston’s expressionless face. Liston began to bleed from a crescent-shaped cut high on the left cheekbone.

Like a bull hurt and maddened by the picadors’ lances, Liston charged forward. The heavy muscles worked under his smooth, broad back as he virtually hurled his 218 pounds at the dodging, bobbing, dancing Clay.

His heavy arms swiped forward and he threw illegal backhand punches in his bearlike lunges. Once, Clay leaned the wrong way and Liston tagged him with a long left. Cassius was staggered, but Liston was hurt and tired. He could not move in to press his advantage.

And now, a strange murmur began to ripple through the half-empty arena and people on blue metal chairs began to look at one another. Something like human electricity danced and flowed as the spectators suddenly realized that even if Cassius lost, he was no fraud. His style was unorthodox, but …

Both fighters were sluggish in the fifth round, breathing heavily. Liston’s face was still impassive, but the grooves along his forehead seemed deeper, and the snorting breaths through his nose harsher.

He seemed even more tired in the sixth as Clay’s eyes cleared and the younger man bore in, then leapt away, jabbing and hooking and landing a solid right to Liston’s jaw. Clay’s jabs were slipping through at will now, bouncing off that rocklike face, opening the cut under the left eye. 

Liston walked heavily back to his corner at the end of the sixth. He did not sit down immediately. Then as Liston did sit down, Clay came dancing out to the center of the ring, waving his arms, all alone. It seemed like a long time before Drew (Bundini) Brown, his assistant trainer, was hugging him and Dundee was dancing up and down, and Jack Nilan, Liston’s adviser, was wrapping yards of tape around the former champion’s left shoulder...

Sonny Liston never answered the bell to the seventh round. The fight was over and the man who would announce to the world the next day that he was a follower of the Nation of Islam and soon change his name to Muhammad Ali, was the champion of the world. Few thought he could go more than a few rounds with Liston, let alone the distance, but his insane prediction that he would knock Liston out in eight rounds proved to be an understatement.

People called that fight the greatest upset in history but not everyone was convinced. Up until the end of the contest which was ruled a technical knockout for Clay, the fight had been even, at least according to the judges and referee's scorecards. Everyone knew that Liston was tied to the mob so surely he must have thrown the fight. Maybe someone from up above told him: "Champ, tonight's not your night." What else could he do?

To this day, no one knows exactly what happened to Liston that night, but it seems likely that his trainer stopped the fight because of the shoulder injury. It's very unlikely that he threw the fight, at least for the sake of gamblers, as the overwhelming odds in favor of him would have plummeted if the fix was in. They didn't. The score would have to be settled in a re-match.

If the first Liston/Clay match was a confusing mess. the Ali/Liston rematch was nothing less than a fiasco.

Clay's announcement that he was affiliated with the Black Muslims and a follower of their leader Elijah Muhammad, went over like a lead balloon among many Americans, black and white. The latter found the group's portrayal of themselves as "blue eyed Devils" not a little disconcerting, while many black Americans, including Martin Luther King, disapproved of their support of segregation. People of both colors considered the group racist. Floyd Patterson, who refused to call him by his new name, went so far as saying that Ali could just as well have joined the KKK.

Liston's popularity didn't exactly soar either as between fights he had a couple of run ins with the law and spent some more time in the pokey.

However to many whites, while they wouldn't want to meet up with Liston on a dark street late at night, Ali was by far the greater threat because of his quick wit, his intelligence, his mouth, and his willingness to use it to speak what was on his mind. He was a double threat because of his allegiance to an organization that had no intention of capitulating to white American values and its expectations of who black people should be and how they should act. "God knows...", you could hear whites in the sixties say in horror, "...a Negro might even one day become president." White America's anxieties were only strengthened when Ali said:

I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.

Surely the world was changing and many white Americans were not ready. Some of course are still not.

By 1965, neither man was riding a crest of popularity and finding a venue to host the rematch proved difficult. The promoters ended up settling for a 4,000 seat hockey arena in the small town of Lewiston, Maine, the smallest venue for a championship fight that anybody could remember. Complicating matters was the company Ali was keeping. During the first fight, Ali's close friend Malcolm X hung out with the contender as he was training. This brought on the consternation of the fight promoters who insisted Ali, at the time still Cassius Clay, renounce any ties he might have had with the Nation of Islam. Clay refused, however Malcolm X did agree to leave the training facility as a concession. After a falling out between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad, Ali sided with Muhammad. Nearly a year to the date after the first Liston/Clay fight, Malcolm X was assassinated in Harlem, allegedly upon the orders of Elijah Muhammad. Word on the street was out that followers of Malcolm had a hit out on Ali as they felt he betrayed his friend and his cause. Not to be outdone, Liston allegedly received threats from Elijah's people. Both men were accompanied by armed guards during their stay in Maine.

Liston trained hard for the second fight and appeared to be ready. Ali was the same old Ali, only the name had changed. You wouldn't know that from listening to the fight announcers who continued to call him by his old name. The fight's tiny venue was only half full. If the pulse of the nation could be taken from the 2,000 souls in the arena that night, the cheers that Liston received was an indication that he was the public's favorite over Ali, who was resoundingly booed when he entered the arena.

Of the fight itself, there is not much to say. Halfway through the first round, Ali followed a Liston jab with an uppercut that may or may not have made contact. With that punch Liston went down. Former heavyweight champ Jersey Joe Walcott the referee that night, had trouble getting Ali to his corner to begin the count. That is the moment captured by Neil Leifer in the photo above. To the uninitiated, it appears that Muhammad Ali is preening and gloating over knocking Liston down. In reality, Ali who knew quite well that the punch he threw could never have brought the great Liston down, was admonishing the former champ to get back up and start fighting. Walcott never got his count off and after Liston got to his feet, the fight resumed briefly, until the official timer told Walcott that he had made a ten count and Liston was down for the entire time. That was good enough for Walcott (although it shouldn't have been), and he stopped the fight. Not only had viewers, either in the small arena in Maine, or all over the world in theaters via closed circuit TV, not settled into their seats, many had not even entered the building.

Ali's punch that may or may not have connected with Liston has gone down in history as the phantom punch. Boxing people have been debating that punch ever since, some insisting that contrary to appearance, it was a deceptively powerful punch. Most however are convinced that Liston took a very obvious dive.

Here's the entire fight, all two minutes and fifteen seconds of it, so you can judge for yourself.

To this day, no one knows exactly what happened, why Liston went down the way he did and if he indeed took a dive, why. Once again there was no indication of any betting irregularity that would imply the fight was fixed. Paul Gallender who spent thirty years gathering information on Liston which resulted in his book Sonny Liston - The Real Story Behind the Ali-Liston Fights, tells the far fetched story that members of the Nation of Islam kidnapped Liston's wife and child and told the fighter he'd never see them again if he won the fight. As far as I know, his is the only account of this story so I'd take it with a huge grain of salt.

Needless to say, this fight was the end of Liston's credibility. He left the country and continued to fight unranked boxers in Europe, never getting a chance at another title. Liston did continue to be a celebrity of sorts, making several cameo appearances on TV and in movies. He died under mysterious circumstances in 1970.

The sport of boxing took a hit as people all over the world rolled their eyes at what they considered obvious deception and fraud in the sport. 

And Ali didn't get his due as champion as Liston's performance in the second fight only increased suspicions that the first fight was rigged as well. The new champ went on to defend his title against eight opponents including former champ Floyd Patterson, whom Ali viewed with contempt after Patterson's remarks about him and his religion. Boxing analysts claim that Ali could have put Patterson away early in the fight, but toyed with him until the fight was stopped in the 12th round.

Then came the defining moment of Muhammad Ali's life, he got drafted.

But that's a story for another day.

Click here for Ali, Round Two.

Ya Gotta Have ❤

It's time to get philosophical. Last night, the Chicago Blackhawks, the defending Stanley Cup champions, were eliminated from the National Hockey League playoffs by the St. Louis Blues. As you may remember, I've been a Blackhawks fan virtually all my life, probably since I was two years old and watching hockey from a crib or whatever contraption my parents stuck me into when they didn't want to bother with me.


Now you might think I'd be taking the news hard, but I'm not. You see, I grew up a Chicago sports fan and am used to bitter disappointment. In fact, disappointment is so natural to me, at least as far as rooting for sports teams goes, I'm never quite sure how to handle it when one of my teams actually wins something. Young people or folks who recently moved to Chicago don't realize what it's like to be a real Chicago fan. To them, this city is a bastion of champions. They think of the Blackhawks with their three recent championships, and the Michael Jordan Bulls who won six NBA championships in eight years. OK that happened last century but Jordan is still as much a part of this town as he was back then. The Bears were in the Super Bowl just a few years back when the late musician Prince did that helluva halftime show; they even won the thing once upon a time. Hard to believe it was thirty years ago, but people around town talk about that Bears team as if it were still together. Heck even the lowly White Sox won the World Series, ten years ago. Like the Bulls, the Cubs haven't won it all since last century (the beginning of it, not the end), but the current team looks promising not that we haven't heard that before.

Now back in my day...

Well let's put it this way, before there was something called the Super Bowl, the Chicago Bears won the NFL Championship in 1963. I was alive but have no memory of it. The next major Chicago team to win a championship, (sorry soccer fans, I'm not counting the long defunct Chicago Sting), was that 1986 Bears team who won the Super Bowl. That is my very first memory of a Chicago championship. I was 27 years old on that glorious day, January 26, 1986 to be exact.

That means during my formative years, the time when I was most interested and passionate about sports, the teams I followed, and my heroes who played for them, in other words, during my entire conscious childhood, there was nothing, zip, nada.  Oh there were the close calls, the '69 Cubs, the '71 and '73 Black Hawks, the '75 Bulls, the '83 Sox and '84 Cubs, when we were at the gates of the Promised Land only to have those gates shut on our fingers.

Well as they say, if it doesn't kill you it only makes you stronger. That's why I'm convinced people who grew up rooting for Chicago teams, at least until those Bulls teams came along in the nineties, were better equipped to deal with the slings and arrows that life throws at us from time to time. As my mother who knew a thing or two about losing Chicago teams always taught me, when you expect the worst out of life, you're never disappointed.

By contrast, young Chicago sports fans don't think of victory as something they might experience one day but only in their wildest dreams, they actually expect to win. When they don't win, look out.

Those are the folks who are moaning and groaning today, complaining that the Hawks dug themselves into too much of a hole to climb out of, that they let the Blues walk all over them, that they fell apart at crunch time, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I get a kick out of people who like me, never played a day of competitive sports, yet feel compelled to criticize men and women who have made a life out of them. Did the Hawks really intend to fall behind early and often to the Blues? Did Corey Crawford plan to let a few shots slip by him that he knew deep down he really should have stopped? Was Captain Jonathan Toews who was held scoreless in the series, lazy, preoccupied, or indifferent? Was Coach Joel Quenneville content to rest upon his laurels as one of the winningest coaches in NHL history?

Hardly. This Chicago Blackhawks team didn't win three Stanley Cup championships for no reason. Perhaps I'm going way out on a limb by saying this but I believe they are the best team this city has produced in over a century, and yes I'm including the six time champion Chicago Bulls of the 1990s. That was a great team dominated by one player. Take that player out of the equation, as they discovered in 1994, and most of 1995, and they were a pretty good team.

These Blackhawks on the other hand, have a core of six or seven players who make up the heart and soul of the team. You probably know their names, Toews, Kane, Hossa, Keith, Hjalmarsson and Seabrook. Those six have been with the team since they won the Cup in 2010. Rounding out that austere group is goaltender Crawford who became the team's starting net minder in 2012.

The rest of the team far from being a supporting cast as Michael Jordan liked to call his teammates, are a group whose members work seamlessly together, just like the different parts of a body. Because the rules of hockey dictate a strict salary cap, successful teams like the Blackhawks are forced to let go of good players every season, especially championship seasons. That is one reason why it is so difficult to win consecutive championships in the NHL. Winning a Cup almost always means losing some of your higher paid, better players, exactly what happened to the Hawks after last season.

Despite that, the Blackhawks have remained one of the handful of elite teams in the league, largely because of the influence of their core players, the brilliant wheeling and dealing of their GM, Stan Bowman, and the magnificent leadership of Coach Q.

I recently joined a Facebook group dedicated to ice hockey, whose members come from all over the US and Canada. Much to my surprise and delight, I discovered how many hockey fans despise the Blackhawks. Just as fans despised the Flyers in the seventies, the Islanders and the Oilers in the eighties, the Red Wings in the nineties, and the Canadiens for eternity, NHL fans despise these Blackhawks because they are really good. One comment which came after one of the Hawks' gutsy wins in this series went something like this:

I really hate the Blackhawks but you gotta admire them for their heart.

Their heart is what enabled them to come back after being down three games to one in a best of seven series. If one were to point fingers, that heart comes directly from their captain. It's true that Jonathan Toews didn't score a goal in the series, but he did get six assists. In perhaps the most important goal for the Blackhawks in this series which came in the second overtime period of game five, Patrick Kane made a point blank shot on Blues goalie Brian Elliot, then skated around the net and picked up his own rebound and flicked the puck into an empty net for the game winner. It was a miraculous play, something we've come to expect from Kane. Although he didn't make it into the score card on that play, it was Toews, by putting himself in harm's way in the goal crease that created enough havoc and distraction to make the goal possible.

But the Blackhawks found their match in the Blues. The team from St. Louis arguably has less talent than the Hawks, but make up for it in toughness. This series was as close as could be. All but one of the seven games were settled by one goal. Game one ended on a fluky St. Louis goal off a Chicago defenseman. In game two the Blackhawks benefited from a few questionable calls. St. Louis won both games on the road putting the Hawks down and almost out, three games to one. In game five in St. Louis, the Hawks let a two goal lead evaporate in the third period, but battled back in overtime which was settled by that brilliant Kane goal. In game six in Chicago, St. Louis scored three unanswered goals to take a two goal lead but the Hawks, still with their backs against the wall, battled back and scored five unanswered goals of their own in the only lopsided game of the series. That victory tied the series three games apiece.

At that point, the Chicago press and much of the national press as well had written off the Blues who blew a two game lead and apparently lacked both the talent and the experience of the Blackhawks. But the Blues showed they had more than enough heart of their own to match the Hawks. It was their turn to blow a two goal lead to the Hawks who tied game seven in the second period. From thereon the game was end to end with both goaltenders standing on their heads to keep their team in the game. Close to the end of the third period I resigned myself to the thought that this series would be settled by a fluke goal in overtime, just like game one.

Just as that thought crossed my mind, the Blackhawks suffered a defensive breakdown, allowing their former teammate Troy Brauer to roam unchecked into the goal crease where he buried the series winning goal into the net from two feet away.

Still the Blackhawks weren't finished. Brent Seabrook took a mean slapshot from the point that beat Brian Elliot, but hit not one, but both goalposts. The chances against hitting both posts without the puck going into the net are steep. It happened twice to the Blackhawks this series.

It was "divine intervention" as network announcer Doc Emrick called it. The hockey gods had their say. They ruled in favor of the Blues.

It was as great a series as any hockey fan could have hoped. Unfortunately, one team had to win and one had to lose. That's just the way the puck bounces.

But cheer up all you newbie Blackhawk fans, they'll be back and with a vengeance. The core guys, well most of them will return along with new stars like the two Russians, Artem Anisimov, and Artemi  Panarin, a Slovak, Richard Panik and a Finn Teuvo Teravainen. Things are looking pretty good with the farm club up in Rockford too so the future looks bright. Plus, no longer being the Stanley Cup champion means that every team in the league won't necessarily be bringing their "A" game against us next year.

Losing to the (with all due respect), despicable St. Louis Blues was a letdown for Blackhawks fans to be sure, but only a temporary one. If you're particularly bummed about this loss, take some advice from someone who understands this sort of thing: relax, take a deep breath, and finally, repeat as often as necessary the traditional mantra of the true Chicago sports fan:

Wait 'til next year.

It Never Gets Old

This year I didn't have to go far to become a part of the Chicago Blackhawks victory celebration, it all started when I hopped on the L...

... and then it turned out the victory parade would roll by the back door to work.

They said somewhere in the neighborhood of two million people showed up in Downtown Chicago yesterday to take part in the celebration, but hiding inside the office popping out when I heard that the parade was a few blocks away, I only encountered a fraction of them. My colleagues who ventured out at lunch told me they witnessed several drunk people (at noon), throwing up. My son who was with some friends a few blocks away smelled pot smoke. But everyone who I encountered behaved themselves, just happy to be a part of history, and to catch a glimpse of their heroes in the red Indian head sweaters, and the Stanley Cup.

There's something unique about that thirty five pound chunk of metal which since 1925 has been the prize de jure of the National Hockey League. Unlike other trophies in professional sports, there is only one Stanley Cup, they don't cast a new one every year. That means every team who wins the championship has to give it up the following year, unless of course they win it again. That hasn't happened since the Detroit Red Wings won it in consecutive years in 1997 and 1998.

The Stanley Cup pre-dates the NHL by 25 years. The Cup, pictured at the bottom center of the photograph below, was donated by the Governor General of Canada, Lord Stanley.

The Montreal Hockey Club, first winners of the Stanley Cup, 1893

If it's not immediately recognizable, that's because of the seven tiers that have been added to accommodate the names of each player on every team that has won the Cup. Each player also gets to spend a day with the Cup. Usually they choose to share the Stanley Cup with their home town, which given the international character of the game, could be at any corner of the world.

If it could, the Stanley Cup would have lots of stories to tell. It no doubt made the rounds at watering holes around the city immediately after the Hawks won their third championship in six years. Before it appeared in Chicago's Loop yesterday, Jonathan Toews, the captain of the Blackhawks, shared it with the residents of  Miserecordia, a local institution in my neighborhood that serves people with developmental disabilities. Thousands of Chicagoans will take the opportunity to see and even lay hands on the Cup in the following weeks as it calls this city its temporary home,

Thursday was the fourth time I laid eyes on the Stanley Cup. The first time was in 1992 at the old Chicago Stadium where I saw it hoisted by Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, and the rest of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Two years later I saw it carried by Mark Messier at the New York Rangers Championship Parade on Lower Broadway in New York City. I wouldn't see it again until 2010 when Patrick Kane hoisted it aboard a double-decker bus on its way to Tribune Tower and the first Blackhawk championship celebration not in my lifetime, but certainly in my memory. This year it was Patrick Sharp, Brent Seabrook, Duncan Keith and his young son, who had the honor of accompanying the Cup through the streets of Chicago, en route to the official rally at Soldier Field.

There were lots of downtown workers who grumbled about the inconvenience surrounding the event. The poor behavior of a small percentage of individuals who showed up, mostly teenagers and young adults, confirmed in some their worst feelings about sports and sports fans. Some folks even expressed outrage that a meaningless event such as a sports championship could capture the imagination of so many people, when there are so many other pressing issues in the world.

They could all be right. On the other hand, aside from the end of a war, I can't think of a single event that can bring together so many people of different backgrounds, for no other reason than pure joy and celebration. In a clip that went viral, on the night of the championship, a local news reporter looking for someone to interview encountered an African American man wearing a Blackhawks tee shirt. He asked the man how he felt and the response was "You know how awesome they are? They got black people loving hockey, ain't that something?"

On Facebook, a friend expressed how much he wished his dad were still alive so he could enjoy the Blackhawks championship. On several occasions on this site, I've expressed the same feelings about my dad who above all other sports, loved hockey, and passed that love along to me. For three times in the last six years, I have thought long and hard about my late father and how happy he would be with this team and their success.

And as has been my tradition after these three championships, after the game on Monday ended I looked up to the sky, raised a glass of good Czech beer, and toasted my dad by saying:

"Nazdravy Tati."

Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and...

Today's the Fourth of July and what could be more appropriate and patriotic than to spend the day with my son by the telly, watching the World Cup. Why not? This country like it or not, is a country of immigrants, people whose relatives if not themselves came from elsewhere. And the game of choice in that nether-region called someplace else, at least in those someplace elses where they don't call it soccer, is in fact, soccer.

The Great Pelé, scoring against Belgium, 1968.

Now I can't think of anything more pointless than comparing the relative merits of one sport against another. Yet every four years, it has been a ritual in this country to compare the world's most popular spectator sport, with our own most popular sports, namely baseball and the game only we refer to as football. Every time the World Cup rolls around, we're subjected to the rantings and ravings of (soocer)football lovers about how their game is so much superior to the two American games because of its continuous activity opposed to the seemingly endless periods of standing around talking, scratching and spitting, only occasionally broken up by fleeting moments of action. On the other side are the Americans who demand our sports are better because their players don't spend all their time running around trying, and usually failing to kick a ball into a net.

In other words, each side is arguing that the other guy's sport is boring. Of course there are loads of people who couldn't care less because to them, ALL sports are boring.

I would argue that you get out of any sport, just like anything else in life, exactly what you put into it. If you've grown up with a game, played it, and/or ever rooted for a particular team at some point in your life, chances are you will appreciate that sport as an adult. You'll understand the intricacies of the game, appreciate the tactics and strategies of the players and coaches, and revel in the skill and mastery of those performing at the absolute highest level of their profession.

If none of the above applies, then a sport is nothing more than some guys kicking a ball around a field, a guy throwing a ball at another guy who's trying to hit it with a stick, or a bunch of guys trying to beat the crap out of each other.

The best thing I ever read about soccer was a beautiful piece called: If God Existed, He'd be a Solid Midfielder*. It was written by a fellow named Aleksandar Hemon from Sarajevo, who found himself stranded in Chicago as he was visiting the city exactly at the moment when civil war broke out in his country, Bosnia-Herzegovina. One of his great passions was playing soccer, and not being able to play regularly while living in a foreign city left him out "at sea, mentally and physically." Fortunately this being a great soccer town if you know where to look, Hemon found a regular pick-up game along the lake in Uptown which was organized by a UPS driver from Ecuador, a fellow by the name of "German." German set up the field, the foul lines, goals, and distributed jerseys to all the participants. He even set up flags representing the nations competing in the World Cup. Since he was middle aged at the time, German would seldom play, unless they were short of players, but was the full time referee. Soccer is truly the one international language as the divergent nationalities of the players in that pickup game attested. The regular players of that pickup game came from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Peru, Chile, Columbia, Belize, Brazil, Jamaica, Nigeria, Somalia, Ethiopia, Senegal, Ertirea, Ghana, Cameroon, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, France Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Ukraine, Russia, Vietnam, and Korea. One of the goalies was from Tibet.

This collected assembly of nations on American soil is not to the liking of everyone, especially commentators like Ann Coulter who last week wrote a cheeky article blasting soccer, essentially comparing Americans' quadrennial interest in the game and the team that represents them, to nothing less than the moral degradation of an entire nation. This set off a maelstrom of silly articles slamming Coulter and her piece, calling her xenophobic, claiming she knows nothing about the game, and defending a game that didn't need defending. Of course that response was Coulter's intention all along and her detractors unwittingly played right into her hands by giving her article way more intention than it deserved.

Anyway, the referee and game organizer, the Ecuadoran named German eventually retired from UPS and moved down to Florida. Without a credible successor, the Uptown pickup game dissolved. Hemon, the author of the piece, found another game in a different neighborhood, this one comprised mostly of Americans and assimilated Europeans and Latinos. He found there was something lacking in this game, the level of passion he was used to simply was not there. Illustrating the difference between the international game and the American game, many times he was admonished by the Americans for his intense style of play. They'd say to him: "Relax, it's only exercise." His response to them was : "...go and run on a fucking treadmill and let me play the game the way the game's supposed to be played."

In a particularly beautiful passage, Hemon described an incident that took place during one of the Uptown games. In typical Chicago fashion, the temperature dropped about thirty degrees and a rain storm "started at the other end of the field and then moved across it towards the far goal, steadily advancing, like a German World Cup team." The power of the storm forced the players to abandon the pitch and make a beeline for German's van. All the players that is except for the goalie and the rest of his Tibetan friends who continued to play in the rain...

as if running in slow motion on the surface of a placid river. The ground is giving off vapour, the mist touching their ankles, at at moments it seems that they're levitating a few inches above the ground, untouched by the flood. 

One of the other players and his wife...

are watching them with perfect calm, as if nothing could ever harm them. They see one of the Tibetans scoring a goal, the rain-heavy ball sliding between the goalie's hands. The goalie is untroubled, smiling, and from where I am, he could be the Dalai Lama himself.

Hemon concludes this passage by describing absolute perfection. He is writing specifically about soccer but it could apply to any game or in fact the perfect moment in any field of endeavor:

...the moment of transcendence that might be familiar to those who practice sports with other people; the moment arising from the chaos of the game, when all your teammates occupy the ideal position on the field; the universe seems to be arranged by a meaningful will that is not yours; the moment that perishes - as moments tend to - when you complete the pass; and all you have left is a vague, physical, orgasmic memory of the instant you were completely connected with the world around you.

It may be only a game but we all should be so lucky to experience such a moment.


*Aleksander Harmon, "If God Existed, He'd be a Solid Midfielder", Granata, ©2009, Granta Publications

The Super Bore?

Armchair quarterbacks and critics alike are denouncing this past Sunday's 43-8 drubbing of the Denver Broncos by the Seattle Seahawks as the most boring mid-winter classic ever. Even my mother who despises football complained to me about the lopsided outcome. It's not too surprising when something promoted up the wazoo doesn't live up to all the hype, it is subject to the same hyperbole as everything else that surrounds the event known as the Super Bowl. People forget that most NFL championship games fall short of the promise expected of what almost always proves to be the most watched television show of the year. Despite the lack of drama, this year's Super Bowl proved to be the most watched television show in US history. According to Nielsen, an "average of 111.5-million" tuned into this game which broke the record of, you guessed it, another Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is the only television show that consistently gains viewers.

Yes, I was one of those viewers. Truth be told, unless my team is in the big game, something that has happened exactly two times since I started caring about such things, I'm not all that interested in the Super Bowl. Like that other crowd pleaser the Academy Awards, I only occasionally tune in. My son however is a big football fan and for months he has looked forward to this game as it happened to fall on the eve of his birthday. In honor of him more than anything else, I watched most of the game from kickoff to the final down.

In honor of my daughter, I even watched the half-time show. This one featured the hyper-talented Bruno Mars whose high intensity performance conjured up the spirits of James Brown and the Temptations as well as allowing his own considerable charm and skills to show through. For some reason unknown to me, the middle of his performance was interrupted by an appearance of the ancient Red Hot Chili Peppers. Now I think they're a perfectly good band, deserving as much as any other big name act to perform in that high profile venue. I haven't a clue, and don't care enough to find out, but I imagine the reason The RHCPs were invited to crash Mars's party was that the brains behind the show believed the Bruno Mars label alone wasn't enough of a draw to prevent old timers like me from leaving the set and go into the kitchen for dinner. (Unfortunately, we did just that after halftime forcing us to miss Percy Harvin's brilliant kickoff return.)

Although the performers and producers handled the Mars/Peppers transition seamlessly, it seemed odd and unnecessary to include both acts. I feel the same way about the pre-game ceremonies featuring Queen Latifah singing America the Beautiful AND soprano Renee Fleming singing the Star Spangled Banner. Both performances were stunning but one would have been enough, either one. It seems as if the producers of the Super Bowl want to have a little something for everybody, just like the old Ed Sullivan Show. The only thing missing were the plate twirlers and Topo Gigio.

Those contrivances in a nutshell, are what I hate about the Super Bowl. There is not one single aspect, from the endless pre-during-post-game babble, to the halftime performances, to the most popular, talked about feature of the whole deal, the commercials, that hasn't been conceived of, debated, and packaged months if not years in advance. After the infamous Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" ten years ago, it seems that the powers that be will go to any length possible to avoid anything that smacks of spontaneity. That's why last year's power outage during the game in New Orleans was treated with all the gravitas of a breach in national security. "HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED?" screamed headlines all over the country the following day.

There is only one exception to the no spontaneity rule, the game itself. That's exactly what makes sporting events such great drama; the means and the outcome are not pre-determined. Any thoughts that football or any other legitimate sport is not entirely on the up and up, had to have been extinguished this Sunday. After all, no one in their right mind would have scripted the game as this one turned out. All the hype about this Super Bowl pitted the perviously unstoppable Bronco offense led by the great quarterback Peyton Manning against the hungry, tenacious defense of the Seahawks. Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman made headlines two weeks ago in the NFC Championship Game by making the game saving deflection of a likely winning touchdown pass by San Francisco's Colin Kaepernick. Immediately after the game he made some boneheaded, self-aggrandizing comments which got him into hot water. Of course the hyperbole machine couldn't get enough of the nonsense:

Was Peyton Manning indeed the greatest quarterback of all time?

Would the self-proclaimed greatest cornerback of all time Richard Sherman back up his words?

Stay tuned...

In this case however the hype was justified. Just like the past World Series, the two teams that faced each other in this year's Super Bowl were the two best teams in the league, if regular season records mean anything to you. This game had all the makings of a matchup of strength against strength, the best offense squared off against a young, quick, and audacious defense. Most folks picked the Broncos, but the oddsmakers only gave the Denver team a two and one half point edge. It looked to everyone that it would be a game for the ages.

Until the first play from scrimmage that is. If you saw the game, I don't need to tell you what happened. If you're one of the 200 million Americans who didn't see it, you clearly don't care and probably gave up on this post long ago.

Despite the terrible beginning (a safety after a bad snap), I'm sure all 111-plus million people watching the game, myself included, had every belief this was a mere speed bump on Peyton Manning's road to his second Super Bowl Championship.

But it was not. Things went from bad to worse for Denver as the Seattle defense found solutions to everything in Manning's bag of tricks, mostly by getting in his face before he had a chance to throw the ball. Denver wasn't able to convert a first down until mid way through the second quarter. Finally as they were driving deep into Seattle territory, Manning was hit while throwing a pass which was picked off by linebacker (and game MVP) Malcolm Smith who ran the ball back 69 yards for a touchdown.

Despite all that, and trailing 22-0 at the half, at least 110 million of us still had faith in Manning's ability  to pull this one out. Then came the aforementioned Percy Harvin kickoff return on the first play of the second half, and at that point, oh maybe 80 million of us started to lose hope.

Peyton Manning was able to mount a successful drive by the end of the third quarter which led to a touchdown and two point conversion but by that point it was all academic. His counterpart, second year man Russell Wilson had a good game even though he didn't really need to, his team's defense and special teams together put up enough points on their own to handily defeat the Broncos.

So was the game boring? Well it certainly wasn't an edge of your seat, nail biter if that's what you mean. But that doesn't mean it was lacking in drama. There was an epic quality fit for Greek tragedy in Peyton Manning's downfall. Certainly one of the best quarterbacks of my lifetime, if not the game's history, and one of the most recognized and likable athletes in the game, Manning's achilles heel it seems is the ability to win the big game. His record in playoff games is now 11-12. Pretty impressive if you compare it to say, me, but when compared to his peers in the top echelon of NFL QBs, well not so much.  Incidentally, Manning is 1 and 2 in Super Bowls, that one victory coming at the expense of Rex Grossman (himself not on the list of all time great quarterbacks), and OK everybody say it in unison, the Chicago Bears.

But give credit where it's due, the real story of this game is the Seattle Seahawks, a team that as they say, was running on all cylinders. Their win over a great Bronco team was devastating on every level. It was truly a magnificent performance, one that is certainly worthy of accolades. Anyone who appreciates the game of football has got to admire the team, including Richard Sherman who more than redeemed himself, and its coaches.

In case you're wondering, no this wasn't the biggest blowout in NFL history, that one came in 1990 as the 49ers and Joe Montana (himself on the short list of all time greatest QBs) beat another great quarterback, John Elway and the Broncos, 55-10. For the record, this Sunday's game came in fourth.

And which game came in second on the list of Super Bowl blowouts you ask? OK maybe you didn't ask. Why of course the most memorable Super Bowl of all time, game number XX in 1986 when ahem, the Chicago Bears defeated the New England Patriots 46-10. Was that game boring?

Certainly not if you were a Bears fan.

So the real question is, if you're not a Seahawks fan, or someone who had money riding on them, was this game boring? Well frankly for me, an underdog team (if only slightly) shutting down a tremendously successful offense, beating them and their future Hall of Fame quarterback in every aspect of the game was very impressive. Beyond that, it was very satisfying that they did it in such an unexpected way, flying in the faces of all the speculators and pundits, and especially the producers of the event, who most certainly would have planned if they could to have, for the game be more of a contest.

Just how unexpected and outrageous was the Seahawks beating the Broncos 43-8?

I'd say maybe as unexpected as a team from Seattle winning any kind of major sports championship.

Possibly it was as ridiculous as a Super Bowl played outdoors in New Jersey.

Or maybe even as outrageous as...

Bob Dylan in a commercial selling cars.

Naw, that could never happen.

A thug's game played by thugs

There's been a lot of talk lately about football supplanting baseball as "our national pastime." It should come as no surprise that football consistently outdraws baseball in terms of TV ratings. Had this past World Series gone to a game seven, that game would have taken place directly opposite a regular season NFL game, nationally broadcast under the brand of "Thursday Night Football." That particular game featured a non-divisional contest between two teams from smaller markets, one good team, the Cincinnati Bengals, and one so so team, the Miami Dolphins. It would have been interesting to see how the television ratings of the two respective sporting events would have compared: a relatively insignificant game, (except where the NFL is concerned, since if you believe all their hype, every game is of the utmost importance), against what would have been the championship game between two evenly matched baseball teams both with glorious histories, capping off what turned out to be a tremendously exciting post-season. Back in the day, a seventh game of the World Series would have drawn as much attention in the United States as a presidential election, the last episode of Breaking Bad, and the Super Bowl all put together.

Not anymore.

Since TNF is shown only on cable and not available to everyone with a TV, it's unlikely that more people would have watched the Dolphins upset the Bengals that night. Still the ratings for this year's World Series were the fourth lowest in history. That despite a fantastic series featuring the emotional draw of the Boston Red Sox, a team that finished dead last in their division last year, and the city they represent, still reeling from the tragedy of the Boston Marathon bombings last April.

Well it turns out the Miami-Cincinnati game was more important than anyone would realize at the time.  That week, Dolphins offensive lineman Jonathan Martin turned up AWOL at a couple of team practices and missed the Thursday night game. He cited "personal reasons" but it would come out that his line-mate, Ritchie Ingonito, a player not particularly known for his tact and good manners, had said some rather unpleasant things to Martin over the season.

OK that's a bit of an understatement. Acting on his coaches' insistence to "toughen up" the rookie Martin, Incognito among other things took it upon himself to send Martin texts and voicemails of the most vile nature, including physical threats to Martin and his family, as well as racial epithets, (Incognito is white, Martin is black). Transcripts of those messages went public (I won't bother to quote any of them but trust me, they're bad). The story went viral and set off a firestorm of diatribes, blasting one if not both of the players. Many of the Dolphin players, a team that like the rest of the NFL is predominantly African American, came to Incognito's defense, saying that kind of talk is perfectly normal locker room jive, and that Martin as a professional football player, rather than complaining to the authorities, should have stood up for himself like a man, presumably with a fist to Incognito's face. On the other side there were calls for Incognito's immediate dismissal for his racist remarks and for workplace harassment. Incognito has in fact, been suspended from the team.

The debate made for great theater, especially all the disingenuous NFL "insiders" who sounding a lot like Captain Renault, the Claude Rains character from Casa Blanca, said they were shocked, SHOCKED, that such words could come out of the mouth of a football player.

Quite frankly I'm not sure which side I'm on. Clearly Incognito is an unabashed, unapologetic, (pardon the expression) asshole, who had long before the Martin incident, created a legacy of sociopathic behavior. Martin on the other hand by his actions has shown, unlike scores of other players who have taken the same kind of verbal abuse throughout the years, that he cannot stand up to the kind of punishment expected of a professional football player, and probably does not belong in the NFL.

In other words, he's a perfectly normal human being. There in a nutshell is the basis for my thesis on why we Americans so love to watch football.

Unlike baseball players who traditionally came from all sectors of society, rich, poor and everything in between, football began in the nineteenth century purely as a collegiate sport, designed to "make men" out of individuals who were not likely to ever be subjected to the demands of hard, physical labor. The comparison is similar to that of rugby in England which was also played by college men, and their game of football (what we call soccer), which was the game of the masses. That distinction is still made to this day: "rugby is a thug's game played by gentlemen, while soccer is a gentleman's game played by thugs," (or something of that nature).

Today, although virtually every NFL player still comes from the college ranks, big time universities recruit their players from all sectors of society based exclusively upon athletic ability, for the sole purpose of playing football (and other lucrative sports) for the school. If star players (i.e.: the ones with a chance of making it into the pros) manage to get a college education in the process, it's purely by accident. Beyond those differences, football is still considered the manliest of games. To strident fans, American football embodies all the virtues of the ideal American male: strength, fearlessness, obedience, love of God and country, and a ferocious, competitive spirit. To its most bellicose fans, football is compared to war, its players to soldiers.

In perhaps the most brilliant comparison ever of the two games, the late comedian George Carlin had this to say about baseball and football:

...the objectives of the two games are completely different: 

In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.

In baseball the object is to go home. And to be safe. - I hope I'll be safe at home!

Unlike most other sports played in this country, full contact football exists purely as a spectator sport. Most Americans have themselves played some form of baseball, either the game itself, its close relative softball, or even kickball, the playground game which has had a recent resurgance among adults looking to re-capture their childhood. In parks and playgrounds all over the country you see pickup basketball, soccer and even lacrosse games played by men, women, and children of all shapes and sizes. And on frozen ponds in the north and up in Canada, all you need to play hockey is a pair of skates, a stick, puck, and a couple pairs of shoes for goals. Other than levels of skill, strategy, and intensity, all those games are essentially the same games the pros play.

Gridiron football is different. The majority of football fans, myself included, have never played the game. OK we may have played football-lite in the form of touch or the slightly more intense flag football. Even if some tackling is thrown in for good measure let's face it, with full contact football's complex set of rules, strict division of labor, highly developed play strategies, and especially its speed and sheer brutality, the games that resemble it have as much in common with the real deal as a foot race has in common with NASCAR.

American football is compelling drama, especially as seen on TV with its incessant analysis and commentary designed to milk every last drop of significance out of the game. Like all legitimate athletic competitions, the outcome is not pre-determined, yet in football there is a sense of urgency that doesn't exist in any other sport. In football, with every play comes the real possibility of nirvana or disaster, depending which side you're on. Think of Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers recently being forced out of a game (and possibly the season) because of an injury on the opening drive of a Monday Night Football game after being cleanly sacked by Chicago's Shea McClellin. In that one play, Green Bay's agony was Chicago's ecstasy. Injuries are part of every sport of course but in other games they are the exception, in football, they're the rule. Given its short season, every football game is a "must win" situation. In America, watching the game has become a Sunday (or Monday or Thursday) ritual, and much like going to church, it is played out as a clash between good and evil, the believers vs. the infidels. In fact it's not uncommon to hear people profess their full belief in one team or other. I once read a newspaper article on game day up in Wisconsin featuring two Catholic priests who quite seriously debated whether or not God is a Packer fan.

For their part, fans live vicariously through the exploits of their larger than life (both literally and figuratively) cartoon-like heroes, as they wail upon the villains on the other side. All the frustrations of the previous week can be alleviated during those three and a half hours on a Sunday afternoon, if all goes well that is. And if it doesn't, you can always blame The Man, dressed in a white cap and a shirt with black and white stripes.

One can learn a lot about football culture just by watching the commercials during a typical game. Never do you see regular people in commercials actually playing the game; most depict the fan, glued to a TV or tail-gating outside the stadium. Yet these fans are not merely passive spectators, no they're usually involved in some kind of ritual designed to help their team win. Another way fans become "active" participants in the game is through the wildly popular game of fantasy football, where "leagues" composed of a group of people compete against each other by selecting NFL players for their individual "team." Each team's performance is based upon that week's cumulative performance of its "drafted" players, all tallied up on the computer.

Of course, like the computer game, football fandom is all fantasy. Since your average fan could never in his wildest dreams suit up in pads and a helmet and get out there and play with the big boys, these rituals enable us to become part of the game, without having to do any of the hard stuff. That's where Jonathan Martin comes in. Normal people would never put up with the kind of crap that was thrown at him. Of course normal people don't make a living expected to protect a quarterback by blocking 300 pound defensive linemen coming full speed ahead at them, prepared to knock their head off given half the chance.

If normal people played professional football, other normal people would not watch it. My guess is that between the two players, Jonathan Martin and Ritchie Incognito, both at the present time inactive, it will be Incognito who returns to the game. He will go through the obligatory sensitivity training and after a few sniffly TV interviews (maybe even with Barbara Walters if we're lucky), he will apologize for his misdeeds, will be publicly deemed acceptable to return to the game, be welcomed with open arms by his teammates, and hailed as a conquering albeit flawed hero. Football fans have forgiven much worse behavior.

As for Martin his talent notwithstanding, he'll probably have a hard time finding another job on an NFL squad, should he chose to do so. He's an outcast now, known by the insiders as someone who's soft, someone who can't take the heat.  That's the kiss of death in the antediluvian culture of the NFL. All those blabbering NFL insiders on TV may publicly praise him for coming forward and exposing the evils of bullying and harassment in their sport but in the end, you can bet your bottom dollar they'd never pick him to play for their team.

I wouldn't worry about Jonathan Martin however. Given his pedigree, both parents well respected Harvard graduates, one a lawyer, the other a professor, my guess is that he got himself a reasonable education while he attended Stanford. In the end he'll probably get an advanced degree and go on to do great things with his life.

On the other hand, after his playing days are over, who knows what's in store for a goon like Incognito. He's probably not coaching material and with his reputation, he's unlikely to end up in the broadcast booth. He'd probably make a heck of a professional wrestler.

So is football our new national pastime? Well I'd have to say no, simply because in the words of Sports Illustrated columnist Frank Deford:

Nobody would dare call football a pantywaist thing like 'pastime.'

Obsession, maybe new religion perhaps would be more fitting terms; certainly gridiron football is without a doubt, America's game.

In the sixties, the columnist, Mary McGrory wrote this:

Baseball is what we used to be. Football is what we have become.

So true. But like Jonathan Martin's future, I don't worry much about baseball either. Despite the declining TV ratings, attendance at MLB games is soaring, baseball's becoming more and more an international game, and little league programs as far as I can tell are still thriving all over the country, insuring the future of the game.

By contrast, with all the attention lately given to the lasting effects of concussions and other serious injuries common in football, fewer and fewer parents are signing their kids up for the game.

In the end, baseball is still the people's game while football for all its popularity, is for the most part nothing more than reality TV.

Thank goodness it's only 128 days until opening day.

In the meantime, go Bears.

They may be thugs, but gosh darn it, they're our thugs.

Only a game

I'm not someone who usually comes up with the timely quip. Like many, I think of the perfect response to a situation perhaps a minute, an hour, or a day after the fact, too late for it to do much good. For example I could have used a good comeback the other day when I described the intensity of parents of some of the kids on my son's Little League team to my mother. She shook her head and said incredulously: "My God, it's only a game."

In a way she's right, in our day sports are inconsequential, unlike pre-Columbian America for example where participants in team sports really had something to lose if they lost the contest, usually their heads. To my mother, sports are uncouth, they have little value compared to allegedly more intellectual activities such as theater, literature, music and the visual arts. To put it bluntly, she's a bit of a snob.

Not that she objects to sports per se, they're perfectly fine in their place. As a schoolteacher and later a principal, she considered scholastic achievement to be the most important part of childhood. She made it clear that being a student was my job. My mother probably wouldn't have objected if I had expressed an interest in playing organized sports, but she'd never have thought of suggesting it herself and would certainly not have pushed me into it.

Which in a way is a shame.

I don't have any illusions that had I been encouraged to play organized sports as a child, I would have become a better, more successful human being. But I think certain aspects of my life relating to issues of self confidence, teamwork, and competitive spirit would have been much different.

Now it's all water under the bridge and we're making up for lost time with our son who has just finished his fifth year of Little League baseball. My wife and I did have to nudge him into it in the beginning but pretty soon (to borrow a metaphor from another sport), he took the ball and ran with it.

This year, in addition to his stint on a team in our local park's house league, he tried out and made the traveling team. As the name implies, a traveling team plays teams made up of the best players from other parks. For the first time in his baseball career, my son is not one of the best players on his team, in fact he's much closer to the bottom than the top. Much to his credit that doesn't bother him. I asked him the other day which he prefers, being the star of a bad team (which is the case with our house league team), or one of the worst players on a really good team. Without missing a beat, he chose the latter. Beyond the fact that winning is more fun than losing, I think my son is processing in his head that if he wants to get better at baseball, he needs to play with and against kids who are better than him. As far as that's concerned, he's way ahead of me. When I was his age, I would have taken the easy path, perfectly content to keep my dream of one day being a baseball star a fantasy, not having to deal with the grunt work of learning how to play the game correctly, and the pressure and humiliation that went along with screwing up in front of other kids who were better than me.

Baseball more than any other, is a game prone to humiliation and pressure. In team sports such as football, soccer, basketball and hockey, lesser skilled players can contribute to the team by mastering relatively simpler skills like blocking, passing off, setting picks, or hitting people. Kids playing those sports at a lower level can blend in with the better players by gleefully running up and down the field, not getting themselves open for a pass.

By contrast, there is no hiding in baseball; if the ball comes to you, you either make the play or you don't. In sports where there is a continuous flow of activity, if you make a mistake, you usually get the chance to redeem yourself pretty quickly. In baseball if you have a bad at bat, you get to spend a lot of time on the bench to think about it, if you make a bad play in the field, you may not get another chance at all as the ball may not get hit to you again.

I'd say that baseball is one of the most difficult games to master; not only do you need the physical skills to succeed, but so much of the game is played in the head. It's the head part of the game that can be devastating to so many players, professionals included. Imagine standing in the batters box with a pitcher throwing a hard ball at you at speeds that could reach 90 miles per hour or more. Not only are you expected to stand there stoically while that ball is coming within inches of hitting you, but you're expected to hit it with a bat that measures only about two inches at its widest. Or being a fielder having to place your body in front of the ball coming at you at even greater speeds, being expected to make a play that could be the difference between your team winning or losing the game. For most players, the biggest fear in baseball is not getting hurt, by far the biggest fear is, pardon the expression, fucking up.

One nice thing about playing on a bad team is that there is little expected of you. I eventually became a fairly decent player, playing mostly in beer leagues just for fun, never in very competitive leagues.  Even still, the pressure to make plays was always intense for me. Playing competitive ball where the stakes are much higher, on a team that expects to win, compounds the pressure exponentially. Frankly for me, just watching my son play on his traveling team is nerve wracking.

Fortunately, my son seems to thrive on the pressure. Yes he gets nervous, but I only know that because I've asked him, you wouldn't know it watching him take the field. He plays right field for the travel team, the position usually reserved for the worst fielder on lower level teams. At his level however, batters actually hit the ball to right field and it's just as important to be able to make plays in right as any other position. On the house league team he has played every position on the field except outfield, but he's adapted very well to playing his new position; as far as I know, he's only booted one ball hit his way. Batting is another story. Unlike his old man who couldn't wait to get up to bat, my son is a little tentative at the plate, still trying to get over an old habit of flinching as the ball comes toward him. In other words, he's doing something that any normal human being would do. But that hasn't prevented him from getting some clutch hits this season, often getting on base and scoring while the big guns at the top of the order have either popped up or struck out.

The travel team program began in our park about five years ago when our little league kept losing players to other parks with outlets for the better players. With a couple of exceptions, the kids on my son's team have played together for four years. It's a multi-sized, multi-ethnic, multi-racial group of kids. Two of the best on the team are girls. In this day and age, that last part shouldn't come as much of a surprise, however in all the games I've witnessed, I've probably missed only three, they were the only girls on the field on either team.

The travel team played in a couple different leagues this season, one a city league, another a suburban league. It's a little comical seeing the contrast between our city team and the suburban teams who are used to playing ball on pristinely manicured fields in their lily white hometowns. They show up at our park wearing freshly dry-cleaned and pressed uniforms, carrying matching equipment bags with the name of their team stitched on them. With attitudes to match their gear, they find a park filled with a highly diverse cast of characters the likes of which they've probably never seen in their young lives, except perhaps on the Discovery Channel. They take one look at our field, playable but less than perfect, no outfield fence (until recently), then notice our uniforms that don't necessarily match from player to player, and the two girls on our team. Then they snicker. The most satisfying part comes when more often than not this season, those snickering teams get beat.

Playing primarily to win is a controversial issue in kids sports. Some leagues, our house league included, hand out little trophies to every kid on every team at the end of the season. Some people have a problem with that but not me. For some kids it will be the only tangible reminder of their brief sports careers. Besides, winning has its own rewards, the desire to win doesn't need to be taught, at the end of the game, every kid knows, and cares about who won and who lost.

By design, a travel team is different. The team is built around winning. Unlike the house team, you have to earn your position. Beyond their skill level, there's not a discernible difference between the kids on the travel team, and their non-travel, house teammates. That's not always the case with the parents. For many of the kids who play only in the house league, baseball is just another summertime diversion. By signing your kids up for the travel team, you're essentially signing away your summer, committing yourself and your kids to baseball every day for two straight months. Small wonder then why these parents, myself included, get a little intense about the game.

There are different reasons why parents commit their children and themselves to such a rigorous schedule during a time that's supposed to be devoted to getting away from the stresses and commitments of everyday life. Cynics say that intense sports parents never themselves got far with sports and live vicariously through the exploits of their children. Others might say that participation in rigorous sports programs are good preparation for adult life, teaching children valuable lessons such as if you want to achieve something worthwhile in life, you have to work very hard for it. Some parents believe that participation in sports enhances a kid's chances of getting into better schools through sports scholarships and other incentives. Others may hold on to the faint glimmer of hope that one day their child may be able to play professional ball. Still others do it simply because their kids love the game. In my case quite honestly, I'd have to say that four of the five reasons apply, but don't tell my son, I see no point in deflating his dream of being a big leaguer someday.

That isn't to say there's not a great deal of personal satisfaction that comes from watching your kid play ball all summer. As compelling drama, few things compare to a well contested sporting event. In theater, the drama is contrived, the outcome pre-ordained. Not so in a baseball game where anything can happen at any given time. I can think of few things more compelling than watching a pitcher getting out of a bases loaded situation in a tie game in extra innings, helped along by a perfectly executed 6-4-3 double play. Or a late inning comeback from a seemingly insurmountable deficit. Or watching a player save the game for his team with a fantastic catch in the outfield.

Perhaps the sweetest moment this season came when our team participated in the district tournament to determine who would represent our area in the Sectionals and beyond, the ultimate winner making it to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA. The toughest competition in the Districts was our arch rival from a nearby city park, well known for its less than scrupulous penchant for recruiting players from all over the city. The tournament came down to a best of three game series between us and them and frankly we had little hope of beating them. But in game one we held tight, after the regulation six innings were played, we were tied at four runs apiece. Following that came four of the most compelling innings of baseball I've ever seen: hits, walks, errors, hit batters, stolen bases, everything imaginable in baseball except for one thing, no runs were scored. I was standing with some old colleagues who live in the neighborhood and just happened to wander past the game. While I was talking to them, one of the other team's batters with two runners on base, hit a ball that looked sure to drop in for a base hit. But our outfielder got a good jump on the ball and at the last second made a leaping catch to end the inning and save the game. Remarking on the catch one of my friends said: "Wow these kids are good." "That's my boy" I proudly told him.

We played ten glorious innings that day until it got too dark to play and the game had to be resumed the next day. The joy of the previous evening did not continue the next day as in the first inning of resumed play, three of our guys (including my son) went down in order and in the bottom of that inning, the other guys scored and won the game. But we got out of that game a sense that we could beat these guys and in the following game, we outlasted them in a slugfest.

The rubber match the following day started out as a wash, our guys and girls couldn't do anything right.  Before we knew it, our team was down 5-0 and it looked very much like it would stay that way. But the other coaches didn't manage their pitchers well and were forced to remove their starter because he threw too many pitches. They brought in a reliever in the sixth inning who couldn't get anybody out. In the end we scored five runs off the poor kid to tie it up to send the game into extra innings. Then it became another defensive struggle as both teams found themselves one run away from either the Regionals or elimination. This time we were the home team with the last at bat and with two outs in bottom of the eighth, one of our best hitters was up to bat. During the series their coach kept switching their first baseman and right fielder depending on who came to bat. Expecting our hard hitting left handed hitter to drive the ball into right field, he took the better fielder who was playing first base and sent him to right. His move backfired as our guy hit a grounder to first which their guy misplayed, making a throwing error which enabled our batter to end up at second. That brought up our best hitter, the Mighty Katie, who promptly hit a single up the middle to score the run and win us the championship.

Since I'm writing this from my home in Chicago and not Williamsport, you can probably infer that we didn't get very far after that. It just so happened that at the beginning of the season our head coach signed the team up for a tournament in the resort city of Wisconsin Dells which would have taken place exactly at the same time as the state finals in the town of Beardstown, Illinois. This placed the team in an odd situation. Had they won the Reigionals, they would have next played downstate in a town best known for its slaughterhouse. If they lost, they would get to play in a place famous for its water parks. A glaring difference between the big leagues and the little leagues is this: the fact that they didn't advance beyond the Regionals didn't really seem to disappoint anybody.

My son's game face.

A fine time was had by all in the Wisconsin Dells tournament, lots of fun in the water, and the team finished second place in the tournament. The only bad part came during the last game when less than desirable officiating resulted in some truly bad behavior from a few of our parents, inspiring the comment to my mother mentioned at the top of this post.

Despite it ending on that sour note, this season was a fantastic experience for my son and me. All the years of playing catch, pitching, and hitting grounders and pop ups to my boy, have been taken to a new level. Having experienced baseball at a level previously unknown to him, he's now a bona fide ballplayer, his future in the game is now in his own capable hands.

While it's been exhausting, it gives me great satisfaction to hear these words coming out of his mouth: "Best summer ever."

Still I'm kind of glad it's over and I have some time left this summer to enjoy the thing that probably gives me more joy than anything else in life, playing catch with my boy, just for the fun of it.

It took me a while but finally I came up with a comeback for my mother's comment. She'd probably appreciate it too, coming as it does from a literary source.

So is Little League baseball really only a game?

Hardly...

To quote the great film director/screen writer John Houston (by way of Dashiell Hammett):

...it's "the stuff that dreams are made of."