Sound Of Chicago When The Cubs Won The World Series

The noisiest city in the world was Chicago after the Cubs
won the World Series last week for the first time since 1908

Better late than never:

I came across this video that a guy named Patrick DeCori took from a window of a high rise near Wrigley Field in Chicago in the moments after the Cubs won the World Series for the first time since 1908.    

Yeah, Chicago was damned noisy that night, but what the hell, they deserved it.

You can hear the pandemonium of shouts, cheers, yelling, fireworks and car horns going off throughout Chicago. You can see fireworks erupting from neighborhoods in the distance.

I also imagine Chicago was the least productive city in the world the day after the Cubs won. But like I said, they deserved it.

It's the most joyous video I've seen in which you can't really see the people celebrating.

Watch:

Grumpy Man Steals Hockey Puck From Kid, But Kid Is OK

A jerk snatched away a puck tossed to this kid
at a recent NHL Pittsburgh Penguins game, but the
Penguins organzation saw what happened
and made it right, as shown here.  

At a recent NHL match between the Buffalo Sabres and the Pittsburgh Penguins in Pittsburgh, the Buffalo coach, Dan Bylsma, decided to be nice and throw an official puck into the stands for a little boy to have.

Balsam used to be Pittsburgh's coach, so what the hell.

As the tossed puck approached the kid, a terrible middle aged or older man frantically reaches out, grabs the puck out of the air as it approached the kid, and triumphantly put it in his pocket.

The puck was clearly intended for the kid, so the guy is selfish ass, maybe winning the Jerk of the Year prize for bad fans in professional sports stadiums.

The snarky sports Web site Deadspin accurately fills us in on the ground rules concerning pucks tossed into stands at NHL games:

"---If you're over the age of 14, the puck is never thrown to you (with the occasional exception if you are an attractive woman.
----If you are over the age of 14 and happen to catch a puck, you are obligated to look around you and give it to a little kid in the vicinity.......
----If you catch a puck tossed over the glass while staring a little kid dead in the face, and then stick it in your back pocket s you sit down in your seat, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that you are a bad, bad man."

Luckily, the Pittsburgh Penguins people saw what happened and made the kid happy after all, so that's good.

Big slap across the face of the jerky adult, though.

Watch the news clip:

My Favorite Sportscaster Strikes Again, This Time Taking On Texas Racism

WFAA-TV sportscaster Dale Hansen brilliantly
unpacks what's behind a racist moment during
a high school basketball game in a Texas suburb  

I rarely pay attention to sports in Texas. I don't search out sports anchors on Texas television stations.

With the exception of Dale Hansen. The sports desk chief at WFAA-TV in Dallas is brilliant.

I first saw him in action a little over a year ago, when football player Michael Sam came out as gay.

Hansen, a gruff white-haired no-nonsense type of guy, had a perfect reaction to people who were appalled that a football player was gay.

Basically he wondered how men who assault women, drive drunk and kill other people on the road, are caught with prostitutes in hotel rooms and that type of thing are welcome in the NFL, but a guy who says he loves another man goes too far.

Hansen said this in conservative Texas, by the way.

Our sportscaster Hansen is back again. This time, a high school basketball game in suburban Flower Mound, Texas featured teenagers holding two signs next to each other as their school faced off against a predominately black team.

One sign said "White." The other said "Power."

Lovely.

Hansen was back on WFAA last week with another excellent rant over this one. As Talking Points Memo noted, he blasted prents in Flower Mound who said the signs were just an accidental paring of signs alongside each other.

He remembed as a kid growing up in Iowa, his father would always call black people the n-word, but still spoke highly of a black family in the town that everyone knew and liked. He said his mind was twisted by his father's casual dismissal of African-Americans, and parents in Flower Mound were doing the same.

"Kids have to be taught to hate it's our parents and grandparents, and our teachers and coaches, too, who teach us to hate....Kids become the product of that environment. I was. And they are.

"I changed and they can, too. But not if we try to defend what you cannot defend and not if we stay silent and think taking their signs away is doing enough.

"the world will not be destroyed by those who do evil but by those who watch them," Hansen concluded, quoting Albert Einstein.

Predictably, the comments section of the YouTube video of Hansen's editorial is full of racist, ignorant comments, but at least there are some thoughtful ones, too.

I'm also happy when sportscasters like Hansen focus on the ethics and morals of people in sports. A lot of people look up to athletes as role models. That's a cliche, but a true one. So they ought to be held to some sort of standard.

When Hansen finished his on-air discussion, one of the other anchors said Hanson was sure to end up with a very full email in box. I'm sure that's true.

Somehow, I doubt Hansen will mind all that much.

Here's the video, totally worth watching:

Gruff Sportcaster In Dallas Offers The BEST Reaction To Gay Likely NFL Pick

The sports world, and a lot of the rest of the world has been abuzz for a week now with the news that Mizzou football star Michael Sam is gay.   

Dallas sportscaster Dale Hansen has
this whole Michael Sam gay thing
figured out, brilliantly.  

And he's likely to become the first openly gay NFL player. Lots of people are fine with this and feel like it doesn't matter, as long as the guy can play a decent game of football.

A few people have been weirded out by it, for no good reason.

OMG! What if he sees me naked in the shower, a few big, supposedly tough (but squeally and wimpy) NFL guys are saying.

Um, he'll probably ignore you? You're probably not his type anyway.

Along comes Dale Hansen, the gruff no-nonsense sportscaster for television station WFAA in Dallas to put the issue to rest, brilliantly. No further comment from me, because Hansen says everything perfectly:

After Weird Alabama Murder, We Need Good Sportsmanship Antidote

The most depressing sports-related news I've come across lately concerns a murder in Alabama.

This woman is charged with murder after
allegedly killing a woman she thought was
insufficiently upset at Alabama's football  loss Saturday.  

For those of you who missed it Auburn beat its archriva Alabama  Saturday in one of the most dramatic endings to a college football game anyone has seen.

At a party after the game, police said, Alabama fan Adrian Laroze Briskey, 28, murdered Michelle Shepard, another Alabama fan,  because the victim seemed insufficiently upset that Alabama had lost. 

That, of course, is the ultimate in bad sportsmanship, something we have long seen too much of on and off the field.

So I was pleased when I found a compilation video on YouTube containing great examples of good sportsmanship.

In the video, I especially like the ultimate fighters, who participate in the most brutal and violent of sports. In these cases when one fighter accidentally injures another, or defeats his opponent badly, the victors react tenderly and kindly toward the people they defeated or hurt.

I also like the clips of people going out of their way to let people who can't normally participate in sports because of disabilities have their moment in the sun.

After watching the video, I now feel better about sports again. You will too:

Hilarious Fenway Park Foul Ball Pic Might Be Best Ever

Foul balls going into the stands are a routine, almost boring part of baseball season.

INCOMING!!!!!!!

Except when a photographer catches the moment just right.

So it is as a photograph by Jim Davis of the Boston Globe is getting tons of attention this week. It happened recently at a Red Sox-Orioles game at Fenway Park in Boston.

Mashable calls the photo not only the funniest foul ball photo in sports history, but possibly the funniest baseball photo ever taken,

You have to study the photo a bit and gaze at the expressions on peoples' faces. There's just so many wonderful reactions to the incoming baseball. So click on the Jim Davis' photograph and gaze away. It's totally worth it.

Winter Is Ending, Which Is A Relief After Watching These Videos

I've come across two videos very recently that demonstrate that winter is out to kill us.

True, the people in both videos were out in the middle of nowhere, in rugged mountains, by people doing some pretty extreme, adventurous sports.

But the videos do want me to take a leisurely nap on a summer beach. (But not in the water! Stay away from the sharks!)

Happy spoiler alert: Everybody lived in the two videos you are about to see.

The first video shows some mountain climbers at someplace called Canale Holzer in Italy. It shows a big avalanche bearing down on them. I'm sure they got quite a scare:






The next video shows an ice climber who seems to have been attacked by an itty bitty chunk of ice falling off the mountain. That glorified ice cube set off a cascading set of problems.

The guy in question was wearing a GoPro camera, so we have the unfortunate ice climber's point of view as his ice climbing excursion goes seriously wrong:

Amputee H.S. Wrestler Shoots Down Most of My Whiny Excuses About Why I Am Too Lame to Exercise

Thanks a lot, Caleb Smith of Harding High School in Minnesota.

See, sometimes I lean on excuses not to get active. My shoulder hurts. I'm tired. There's that bit of arthritis in my hip.  And you, Caleb, just shot those excuses out of the water.

Smith is a 120 pound high school wrestler. That in itself is not such a big deal. There's lots of teens like that. Yawn.

High schoo wrestler Caleb Smith of
Minnesota. Photo from CBS.

Smith, however, has no arms below the elbows, no legs below the knees. He contracted a blood infection when he was four years old, and the only way to save his life was the amputations.

But Smith seems to be doing pretty well. He first went out for wrestling when he was in fifth grade, and is now part of the high school team.

His coach said Smith's a tough opponent because he's stronger than you'd think, and his quote, unquote disability makes him approach matches more innovatively, and makes it more difficult for opponents to grapple with him successfully.

The kid's pretty built, too, as you will see in the video below.

So, again, thanks a bunch, Caleb. Too bad if my tris are still a bit sore from the last workout. I've got to hit the gym.

Best Basketball Game EVER was recent El Paso High School Match

You might have seen this video already, since it's been all over the news, and Facebook, and Twitter, etc.  but I want to share it anyway.

It's a CBS report of perhaps the best basketball game ever. It contained no NBA stars, no incredible plays, no miraculous baskets, no stars, no glitz. It did have sportsmanship. And heroes. Boy, did it have sportsmanship and heroes.

I won't spoil it for you, other than to say the kids are alright. Watch the report below (Warning: a Kleenex alert goes with this video)

Portland Trailblazer Really Is One With His Remarkable Story

I don't usually read the sports pages and I'm not usually particularly interested in new members of the NBA's Portland Trailblazers, but I stumbled upon one of the best examples of sportswriting I've ever seen. And a related video that is guaranteed to make you weepy.

Reading and watching are both worth it.

Portland Trailblazer Meyer Leonard

The Oregonian's John Canzano' wrote about Meyer Leonard, drafted in the first round by the Trailblazers. It could have been a routine, boring sports story. But Leonard has an amazing, if sad past, which he has clearly overcome.

Leonard's brother Bailey is a Marine, and the siblings are as close as any siblings can be. The brothers' father died when they were young. They suffered through poverty.

Leonard went about his business of launching a basketball career while worried sick about Bailey, whose life was in danger as he fought in Afghanistan.   I won't go into it further, just read Canzano's article.  Even if you never read the sports page,  read that. 

They say love conquers all. And I guess the love between two brothers is proof of that.

When you're done reading, watch the video below, put together by John Canzano. In it, Meyer Leonard is a the basketball court, in March, in Champagen, Illinois. It looks like he's practicing.   Watch what happens when a certain visitor stops by to congratulate him.

Throw That Mobile Phone! Future Olympic Event?

There's a sporting competition for everyone and everything, it appears.

In Finland, they recently held the World Mobile Phone Throwing Championship, appealing to anyone who has ever had trouble connecting on their cell phone.

This ought to be an Olympic sport, let me tell you. I'm sure. I wonder if people throw the phones further if they've been frustrated by spotty service?

I wonder if there's a technique, a style of training that makes you throw phones the greatest distance. Is there a regulation mobile phone to throw, or will any one do? So many questions

If you want to participate in a mobile phone throwing contest, you can watch the following video for tips and pointers:

Sportsmanship Award?

I always llke a nice sports story, since you get a lot of negative ones. You know, the steroids, the fights, the overinflated salaries.

Meghan Vogel, right, helps Arden McMath across
the finish line at an Ohio track meet.  

But good news happens from time to time. Good news that has nothing to do with who won and by how much.

Such was the case in Ohio, when a runner and at a high school track meet struggled, and a runner from an opposing team intervened.  

This high school system has a rule against one runner helping another, but they wisely decided to waive the rules in this case.  Rules are rules, yes, but there are times when they need to be bent.

So hats off to Meghan Vogel, who demonstrated that you ought to know when to compete and compete hard, and when to not compete.

One of the Best Ballpark National Anthem Performances.

The Red Sox have been uneven this early season, though lately they've hit their stride, winning their sixth straight game with a win over the Chicago White Sox last night.

Whatever the fortunes of the Red Sox, a video taken at Fenway Park four years ago seems to have gotten renewed attention. It will warm your heart if you stay with it: It was National Disabilities Awareness Day and a young man with a disability sang the National Anthem.

He got nervous, but the day was saved. Watch it and smile:

"Old Lady" Steve Tyler Lost in Patriots' Stadium

Steve Tyler of the group Aerosmith sang (or shrieked, depending on your perspective) the National Anthem at last week's NFL playoffs between the Baltimore Ravens and New England Patriots at Foxborough, Mass.  (For those of you living in a cave, the Patriots won. Go Pats!)

Below is a photo of Tyler and Patriots Quarterback Tom Brady after the game. But read first how Boston.com captioned the photo for a good laugh:

"Tom Brady, (right) directs an elderly, homeless lady to an exit following the AFC Championship NFL Game against the Baltimore Ravens on Jan. 22, 2012 in Foxborough, Mass."

49s Fumbler Death Threats, Cat Murder and Lack of Perspective

In the continuing annals of people in this country who have no sense of perspective at all, I give you two new exhibits.

First we go to San Francisco 49s wide receiver Kyle Williams, who, during the NFL playoffs over the weekend, made some mistakes and help cost his team a place in the Super Bowl.

San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Kyle Williams shown here either
expressing his disappointment in his game performance, or
trying to drown out the yahoos who issued death threats againts him.

Williams feels bad, takes ownership of the mistakes, and I know he will keep plugging. That should be the end of the story. He's not exactly a mass murderer, right? Just a bloke who had an iffy day that had no bearing on the fate of the world.

Well, a lot of people would disagree. Williams has gotten a ton of death threats for his less than stellar performance on the field. People want his wife and kids killed for this too. Seriously. (That Williams does not have a wife and kids apparently is beside the point.)

Here's one typical example, cited by bleacherreport.com who found this charming message about Williams on Facebook from some yahoo identified as Cole Matthew Mitguard:

"Kyle Williams... you need to leave San Francisco forever, you should never be allowed to play in the NFL ever again... Your play and ypur post game comments should be enough to earn yourself a spot in 49ers history's... As the biggest POS to ever wear the red and gold. Lots of hope for next year, let's just hope that KW gets hit by a bus, eaten by a lion, or dies in some other terrible way so he can't ruin the 49ers season again... What a terrible piece of garbage you are KW, you ruined the game I have been waiting for over 10 years..

Really. So Cole, you've been waiting for the 49ers to win for a decade, you think Williams took it away from you and so he must die. Oh, you poor, poor victim.  Enduring your football team's loss has to be so much worse than minor inconveniences like terminal cancer, homelessness, rape, or all kinds of awful things decent people are forced to face.

Cole, I think you're being just a tiny bit melodramatic, no?

Williams is worse than a serial killer because he fumbled a football?f  I would love to confront the people who made the threats to find out what they were thinking. What other mistakes deserve the death penalty? Do I deserve to die because I wasn't paying attention this morning while walking along a sidewalk and almost bumped into someone?

Mitguard's Facebook post and the response it got is fascinating, as it presents a window onto the psyche of people who make these weird threats.  When confronted, they do back down, in kind of a sniveling way.   At first Cole says, petulantly, "Why is it that I should restrain myself from expressing myself."

Well, because you sound like a moron.

Mitguard goes on to concede that maybe, just maybe, the death threat was a little over the top. But he goes on and on about his anguish that Williams blew two plays. The horror! "Every 49ers fan is entitled to at least 24 hours of unmitigated rage," he writes.

True, sports fans are entitled to being annoyed by a losing team. And sure, if your friendly neighborhood NFL wide receiver does a crappy job, why not publicly complain and criticize? But unmitigated rage? So you're going to start a riot or something too? I guess that's whats behind those riots you get after a team loses a big game. Right, fine folks of Vancouver?

Further responding to being confronted, our buddy Cole writes this:

"Please do not try and take the moral high ground on someone in my position who is both drunk and frustrated at this evenings events. But at the same time, I find it infanelty (sic) more embarrasing that their (sic) are fans out there who don't put their beliefs out there."



Oh, OK. You're drunk and frustrated, so that gives you the right to offer threats, even if they're not serious. And you're saying that if your team disappoints you, you're supposed to go apeshit because a real person doesn't have a temper tantrum when the home team loses?

Like I said, disappointment and frustration among fans is perfectly fine when the team loses. But again I have to ask the question:  How is this melodrama a sign of being a real man, a real team player?

Toward the end, Cole's Facebook friends talk him down. He even finds it in his heart to see some  sunshine.   "Next year is going to be an awesome year to be a 49ers fan."

Atta boy, Cole!

I don't mean to pick exclusively on this one poor soul, but his Facebook post was so readily accessible that I couldn't resist analyzing it as a textbook example of being a little over the top.

It looks like Cole has calmed down, but what about the rest of those members of the wacko death threat brigade?  Maybe killing a whole town of people is OK, but screwing up a football game is grounds for swift capital punishment?

Somebody please explain this to me.

Next we go to Arkansas, where the campaign manager for a Congressional candidate came home and found somebody killed his cat and scrawled "liberal" on the cat's corpse.

Apparently, if you're a liberal, your cat needs to die.  Because it's the cat's fault your liberal. Or something.  And which animals should die if somebody is deemed too conservative?

Ken Aden, the Congressional candidate whose campaign manager had to deal with this, naturally condemned this and said he knows that his opponent, Steve Womack, and Womack's campaign, had absolutely nothing to do with the disgusting incident.

Womack for his part, said in no uncertain terms that the idea of brutalizing an animal to make a political statement is beyond any standard of decency.

So at least the political candidates are behaving like sane adults here.

But still, some loser is out there, thinking the logical thing to do with a political candidate you don't like is torture and kill his pets.

I guess in the name of being an "American" the torturer decided to instill fear in a legitimate political campaign. Being a terrorist is OK if it fits your own political views?

Oooh, I hope they catch more of the people who did this, and the people who made death threats against the football player, and make their names public. Not because I want any physical harm to come to them. But because they need to be publicly embarrassed all to hell.

But these miscreants are probably too stupid to learn anything from this.
  .