Month: September 2012

mma

UFC 152: Expectations vs. reality

Posted on by Beau Dure

A good, strong pay-per-view card was exactly what the UFC needed after a summer of injuries, other bad news and the first major cancellation in the promotion’s history. Attendance in Toronto was a puzzler — a couple thousand and a couple million less than the UFC’s December visit to the same venue. But it likely did good business on TV, and it didn’t disappoint.

Here’s what happened and how it compared to the fight odds and various gut feelings:

Kyle Noke vs. Charlie Brenneman (welterweight)

What we expected: Former contender Brenneman working his way back up against TUF alum Noke, who was dropping a weight class in either a shrewd move of a bit of desperation.

What we got: A 45-second demolition by Noke.

Mitch Gagnon vs. Walel Watson (bantamweight)

What we expected: A tough bout for the long-limbed Watson, trying to maintain his UFC status after two losses, against Ontario’s own Gagnon.

What we got: Watson leaped in for the ever-risky Superman punch, and Gagnon countered perfectly with a powerful left hand. Gagnon cleaned up with a rear naked choke for his first UFC win, needing just 69 seconds to do it.

Simeon Thoreson vs. Seth Baczynski (welterweight)

What we expected: A toss-up bout between an intriguing Norwegian prospect and a gritty TUF alum. (Thoreson is the Norwegian, in case you couldn’t guess.) Bloody Elbow thought this would be a ground-fighting battle.

What we got: Thoreson was picking Baczynski apart on the feet until … bam. One good left from Baczynski sent Thoreson toppling face-first, and referee Big John McCarthy raced in to pull Baczynski away and stop the fight.

(Total time of the three Facebook fights: 6:04.)

Jimy Hettes vs. Marcus Brimage (featherweight)

What we expected: Another step up the ladder for Hettes, who was so impressive in wiping out Nam Phan. The oddsmakers had this one as the second-widest gap between favorite and underdog on this card. (Jones over Belfort was No. 1.)

What we got: Sharp striking from Brimage and a well-deserved unanimous decision for the TUF alum, who looks much better now than he did on the show.

Sean Pierson vs. Lance Benoist (welterweight)

What we expected: Hard to say. The odds favored the far younger Benoist, but Pierson had the experience edge and the home crowd. And Benoist was fighting on relatively short notice.

What we got: A good one. Pierson had the better of it until the end, when he got tagged and had to survive a late onslaught. Pierson got the decision.

Evan Dunham vs. T.J. Grant (lightweight)

What we expected: A Fight of the Night contender. Dunham was on the rise until “losing” a ridiculous decision to Sean Sherk, though he  was set back a bit more with his loss to Melvin Guillard. Grant was OK at welterweight but has looked good at lightweight.

What we got: Fight of the Night. Grant bloodied Dunham badly but had to work to eke out a close decision. Dunham disagreed.

Igor Pokrajac vs. Vinny Magalhaes (light heavyweight)

What we expected: A classic striker-vs.-grappler matchup, with the underrated Pokrajac likely to take the win if he could stay out of the grappling specialist’s armbar.

What we got: He didn’t stay out of the armbar.

Cub Swanson vs. Charles Oliveira (featherweight)

What we expected: Another grappling showcase for Oliveira.

What we got: A stunning knockout, with Oliveira falling in slow motion. On a night of big knockouts, Swanson won the bonus. After after being merely above-average in WEC competition, he looks like a powerful force in the UFC.

Matt Hamill vs. Roger Hollett (light heavyweight)

What we expected: An easy tune-up for Hamill in his return from retirement.

What we got: A boring tune-up for Hamill in his return from retirement. Formerly a dominating wrestler, Hamill looked like a slow kickboxer. Two takedowns and the ensuing ground-and-pound — effective in subduing both his opponent and the crowd — were enough to earn an easy decision.

Michael Bisping vs. Brian Stann (middleweight)

What we expected: The hype rang hollow — did anyone think Bisping was doing anything other than playing the “heel” role in his taunts of one of the sport’s all-time good guys? But it was still an intriguing matchup, with the ever-dangerous Bisping sure to test Stann.

What we got: Bisping looked fantastic. Stick, move, stick again, takedown. Stann simply had no answers. And yes, Bisping showed a ton of respect for Stann in the postfight interview, which should shock absolutely no one. This was never a genuine feud.

Demetrious Johnson vs. Joseph Benavidez (flyweight title fight)

What we expected: A barnburner between two perfect examples of the fast pace and superb technique in the new flyweight class.

What we got: A barnburner that mysteriously drew boos from some in the crowd. Dana White rightly questioned their intelligence. Great fight, good decision win for the sharp Johnson despite a powerful  fourth round for Benavidez.

Jon Jones vs. Vitor Belfort (light heavyweight title fight)

What we expected: No more than a puncher’s chance for the accomplished but aging Belfort against the supremely talented Jones.

What we got: Puncher’s chance? We meant submission chance. Belfort pulled guard several times and had Jones in serious trouble with an armbar in the first round that may have damaged Jones’ arm. Yet Jones, to me at least, never looked like he was going to tap. Jones maneuvered his way out, then went to work with his elbow-heavy ground-and-pound attack. In the next couple of rounds, he put on a kicking clinic, dropping Belfort with a strong body kick. By the fourth, Belfort had little left to offer, and Jones landed on top of him in side control. Only a few seconds later, Belfort tapped to a keylock.

1
cycling, general sports

Weekend picks: Cycling, cricket and golf championships … of sorts

Posted on by Beau Dure

Three events this weekend are “championships” that are overshadowed by other events in their sports. One common thread: All three are condensed versions of sports that have longer, fairer tests of skill.

Cycling: We’ve already had three three-week tours (in men’s cycling, at least) as well as the Olympics. Pending future doping developments, we have a Tour de France champion and several Olympic medalists. So now we crown world champions?

A one-day race doesn’t tell you that much, anyway. Perhaps a breakaway gets lucky. Perhaps a sprinter sees a rival caught up in traffic and pounces to take the win. Maybe an uphill finish favors climbers. Over the course of a Grand Tour, many of these things even out, and the yellow and green jerseys are well-deserved.

But the good news: Cyclists still care about the world titles at stake, and that means we’ll see the best fields since the Olympics. Universal Sports

Cricket: Twenty20 cricket has caught on in the 10 years or so since its introduction, mostly because people can see all the action without investing an entire day or more. If you see big crowds at England’s county cricket four-day matches, the economy is either in amazing shape or in the toilet. Purists don’t like it because it takes away a lot of the game’s tactics. No room for defensive, game-prolonging shots here. Swing, swing away.

Maybe the top Test-playing country is the best team in the world, and maybe the World Cup (one-day, but 2.5 times longer than Twenty20) has more history. But this is fan-friendly. ESPN3

Golf: Here’s the event that needs a change. The Tour Championship takes place well after all the majors — this year, it’s also right before the Ryder Cup. And it’s all based on a yearlong points competition, anyway, so the tournament includes a lot of extraneous math.

Why not make it like combined sports at the Olympics (Nordic combined, modern pentathlon)? Convert the points to strokes. If you’re 500 points behind, you’re five strokes behind. Best score at the end of tournament is the season winner. Golf Channel/NBC

Also this weekend: Plenty of good soccer matchups, UFC 152 and a college water polo game you should watch just because Michael Hiestand was snarky about it.

0
soccer

A farewell to Pia: What she changed, what she didn’t

Posted on by Beau Dure
Photo by Scott Bales/YCJ

The dry-erase boards in USA TODAY’s gleaming conference rooms are rarely used for soccer tactics. But when Abby Wambach, Kate Markgraf and a couple of their U.S. teammates dropped by to visit a few months after Pia Sundhage was hired, we broke out the Xs and Os to chat about everything the Swedish coach was going to change with this team.

Little did we know that Sundhage would have an immense impact on this team without really overhauling the USA’s tactics. You could argue that the U.S. Under-20 team, under college soccer mainstay Steve Swanson, plays more of the much-hyped possession game than Sundhage’s team.

Instead, Sundhage adapted to the players around her. And Sundhage’s genius proved to be about something other than on-field style. She steadied the team with a guitar and a smile.

Sundhage’s legacy is one of boundless optimism, shining through with her team management, her singing voice, and a glass that was — as she reminded us in so many press conferences over the years — always half full.

Not that Sundhage was always easygoing. Natasha Kai was out, in, and finally out. Hope Solo’s memoir is full of praise for Pia, but the goalkeeper’s epilogue says Sundhage threatened to drop her from the team over the publication of her book.

The nattering nabobs of negativity on Twitter will always scoff that any coach should win with the depth of talent the USA possesses. They forget that Sundhage inherited an utter mess after the 2007 World Cup implosion. She kept most of the talented but combustible team together — injuries, not coaching decisions, accounted for most of the changes from 2007 to 2008 — and smoothed over the ill will.

And yet it got worse. Wambach shattered her leg in a pre-Olympic friendly. The U.S. women went to China, dropped their opener and sputtered offensively. They scraped into the semifinal and trailed Japan until makeshift forward Angela Hucles combined with Heather O’Reilly and Lori Chalupny for a four-goal outburst.

Sundhage’s faith in Solo paid off in the final. A magnificent goalkeeping performance kept it close. Carli Lloyd provided the goal.

(Solo? Lloyd? Olympic final? Didn’t we just see that? Yes, we did. And though the pugnacious Lloyd took a shot at her “doubters” after the 2012 final, Sundhage rolled with it. Her faith in Lloyd, whose every misstep threatens to crash Twitter, was vindicated.)

The chemistry-conscious Sundhage may not have brought in new players at the rate some fans wanted. But her constant presence at WPS games was worth the air miles, as Becky Sauerbrunn, Lori Lindsey and breakout star Megan Rapinoe built their cases for national team spots.

Tactically, perhaps the team was less predictable that it was in, say, the 2003 World Cup semifinal, when the unimaginative U.S. offense kept banging the ball in the air against a German defense well-equipped to deal with that threat. Yet this is still a team that thrives on athleticism rather than long spells of possession, and the USA would’ve accomplished much less in the past two years without Rapinoe and company floating crosses toward the imposing Wambach. The aerial game helped the USA rally to win Sundhage’s farewell game Wednesday night.

The changes were subtle. The challenges were not. Nothing comes easy for the U.S. women. If it didn’t come easy in 1999, when the rest of the world had only a couple of players making a living in the game, why would it come easily now?

So raise a glass to Pia. Half full, of course.

4
soccer

Women’s soccer league officially getting more official

Posted on by Beau Dure
Hi, I’m Alex Morgan. I played professional soccer for the Western New York Flash. (Photo: Andy Mead/YCJ)

U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati talked with a few reporters yesterday (I had a conflict that involved cat-herding, I mean, youth soccer coaching) about the progress toward a new women’s soccer league.

The important takeaway wasn’t what was said. It was who said it.

If you read my last post on the matter, you know that there was some chatter suggesting that this new women’s soccer league was some sort of pipe dream of people who weren’t involved with U.S. Soccer. Gulati’s conference call made it clear: U.S. Soccer is at the table with the interested parties, with the most recent meeting taking place a few hours before the conference call. (That meeting did not include Dan Borislow or the WPSL, Jeff Kassouf reports. More about the WPSL shortly, but I’m not turning this post into another Borislow discussion thread.)

So what happened at the meeting, or what can we say so far? Let’s check Gulati’s comments: “quite positive,” “preliminary discussion with the National Team players,” “still being worked on” … in other words, nothing concrete.

But from U.S. Soccer’s perspective, things are changing. Support for a domestic women’s league has always seemed tepid. Now, Charles Boehm writes:

According to sources with knowledge of the situation, U.S. Soccer officials have concluded that the medium and long-term interests of the women’s program are best served by carefully fostering a pro or semipro league rather than maintaining a costly, and perhaps counterproductive, residency program for the core of the national team. Soccer Wire understands this to involve U.S. Soccer underwriting some or all of the cost of substantial salaries for established national teamers.

That’s not to say the new league suddenly has everyone following the same agenda. The WPSL, which tossed together an Elite League last year to include four pro teams (three formerly in WPS) and some of its top amateur sides, is still moving forward. The WPSL’s comment:

The WPSL Elite is still expanding for the upcoming 2012/13 season and expect a great season.

But the WPSL isn’t showing any outright hostility. Meanwhile, the USL is happy to move forward on multiple fronts.

USL continues to actively support the Federation’s leadership in the establishment of a viable women’s professional soccer league.  Simultaneously, we remain focused on strengthening the W-League for the 2013 season which was the home to many of the continent’s top players in 2012.

Maybe it’s impossible to make everyone happy in the women’s soccer turf wars. A better word might be “content.”

The skeptics are out on Twitter, with former Sky Blue GM Gerry Marrone asking this:

Then from the other end of the spectrum:

To which the Boston Breakers’ Lisa Cole replied:

The “better than nothing” argument (or, technically, the “better than the leagues that use college players and have to wrap up in July” argument) is hard to refute. Other leagues around the world have built on years of relative stability. Now they have enough cash to throw at U.S. players to lure them overseas. Lesson to be learned?

6
cycling, olympic sports, soccer, tennis

Monday Myriad: Here comes the soccer deluge

Posted on by Beau Dure

The Monday Myriad is a little delayed this week for a few reasons. Today was a big day for parenting and youth soccer stuff. Also — there’s not a whole heck of a lot going on.

If you have any interest whatsoever in soccer, though, that’s about to change.

Here’s a quick look at what has happened and what’s about to happen:

Tennis: The USA was simply overwhelmed against Spain in the Davis Cup finals. Spain is so good in soccer and tennis … how about soccer tennis?

Meanwhile, Venus Williams led the Washington Kastles to the World Team Tennis title.

Women’s soccer: You surely know the U.S. women came back to beat Australia 2-1 over the weekend. The U.S. players take a few minutes to get the competitive fire burning in these friendlies, so nothing about the game was surprising except for Lisa de Vanna’s marvelous goal.

To give something unique here, check out the Australian perspective.

And something from August that may not have gotten much attention: Shannon Boxx, who scored the game-winner Sunday, wrote an opinion piece for Politico about living with lupus — and what Congress can do about the disease.

Olympic sports: Mostly lower-level stuff this week, with some U.S. prospects looking sharp in figure skating and field hockey. The toughest competition was probably the women’s wrestling team selection for the upcoming World Championships.

COMING UP

Champions League: As the league kicks off, FoxSoccer’s Leander Schaerlaeckens examines the upheaval among Europe’s power clubs, mostly a function of clubs that are shaky economic ground and those that have owners with bottomless wallets.

And if you’re used to buying Four Four Two or World Soccer for your Champions League capsules, you might want to check ESPNFC first. It’s a lot cheaper.

Cycling: The road World Championships will surely favor whichever cyclists can find anything left in their legs after the Grand Tours and the Olympics.

Archery: Olympians Brady Ellison and Jennifer Nichols have qualified for the eight-archer fields at the Archery World Cup final.

MMA: UFC 152 in Toronto, with Jon Jones defending his title against Vitor Belfort. Or Chael Sonnen. Or whoever. The co-main event might be better — the first UFC flyweight title bout, with Joseph Benavidez against Demetrious Johnson.

Cricket: Twenty20 World Championship! Afghanistan qualified for the tournament. England is the defending world champion. Yes, England.

0
soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: Go your own way

Posted on by Beau Dure
Yeah, they might be friendly, but do you want to risk it?

A new season has started, and we’re noticing that we’re not on the same page.

And those are the adults. The kids? Yeah, they’re all over the place.

I’ve started coaching U9, where we have enough players on the field to talk about actual “formations.” This is a new concept for those who have been playing 5v5 ball in which the overriding tactical comment is, “Oh, please, in the name of all that’s holy, would you SPREAD OUT?!”

So I used the illustration here to show how playing in a formation doesn’t mean that our defenders should be 40 yards behind our midfielders (our field is 50, maybe a little more). A pro coach would point to all the tactical reasons to play closer to midfield. In my case, I’m telling them a flying saucer will land if they leave too much space.

That’s how I’m getting the kids on the same page. The adults? Not my place to do so, and probably impossible.

Two things that have come up this month to show that all the U.S. Soccer curricula and local club guidelines in the world aren’t getting all the coaches to get with the program.

1. Practice? It’s quite clear in our local club that the single-digit House teams are supposed to practice once a week. You can’t get a practice-field slot for more than one session a week.

One of our U7 teams, though, has come up with a second (optional) practice during the week somehow. Not sure where it is.

Now here’s the funny part. Our club offers a “crossover” program in which U7 players can work with professional coaches once a week and play a couple of extra games, like a mini-travel team. There’s also a cheaper skills-training session with pro coaches once a week. So players can actually get a second practice — even a third, if they do both sessions — with professional coaches each week. (Granted, those sessions aren’t free.)

I’m not sure whether I should object to this team practicing twice a week. We in the USA fret that our kids don’t go out and play more soccer on their own, so if they want to play somewhere with their teammates without a formal pro-coaching session, that should be OK, right?

Maybe I’m just scratching my head and wondering why certain coaches always get players and families who are so serious about the game, while I’ve spent a lot of my past seasons cat-herding and pleading with parents to get to games on time. I’ve seen parents on several teams in our club who were quite clearly looking at soccer practice as an hour of day care. (This is not directed at my current teams, who are awesome!)

And maybe I’m a little worried that my young team with solid enthusiasm and talent has opened against a U7 team that looked like a teenage Brazilian futsal team, and then we have to play this twice-a-week team pretty soon.

The only solution I see here is some sort of draconian talent-dispersion tool, like the Little League I knew growing up that held a player draft to make the teams equal. Surely that solution is worse than the problem.

The second issue might spur more conversation …

2. Speed! I saw a U8 team practicing with remarkable speed and precision. Turned out I knew a couple of the players and coaches involved, so I had a chance to chat.

From these enthusiastic folks, I learned that they’ve had a lot of success — including a summer tournament win (reminder: rising U8, where we don’t keep scores in the leagues). And the secret?

They do a lot of speed workouts. They may not be the most skilled team, but they can beat people because they’re used to going fast.

If you’ve bought into the notion that player development is more important than winning, as every youth organization wants us to believe, your head is spinning. If you’re worried that U.S. youth coaches prize athleticism over skills, your head is spinning faster.

So here’s your challenge: How do you convince this team they’re doing the wrong thing? The kids are having fun. The coaches are having fun. They’re getting good exercise.

How do you convince them that some general long-term goal is more important than what they’re doing right now? Or should you?

2
olympic sports

Will the Olympics get bigger if they’re only every four years?

Posted on by Beau Dure

My former employer is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a major redesign (sure to be controversial) and a lot of broad-based stories looking at the next 30 years (not to be overlooked).

Among those stories: U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun says the Olympics are only going to get more relevant:

Think Olympics are big now? Just wait – USATODAY.com.

It’s a good argument, but I can see a few issues:

1. If the Summer Games in particular get any “bigger,” no one’s going to be able to host. The price tag is way too high — at least for a non-authoritarian country.

2. In this short-attention span world, can … um … what was my point? …

Oh … right — can the Olympics be more relevant if the U.S. audience insists on viewing these sports only every four years? When will we start paying attention to World Championships, the Diamond League and various World Cups?

And could we have smaller-scale Olympic-style competitions with multiple sports? The Pan Am Games are virtually invisible in the USA. (The Asian Games seem to have a much better foothold in that region.)

Perhaps it’s self-interest, being the editor of a blog that treats Olympic sports as something serious, but I think the USOC and IOC need to think more creatively if they want the Olympic spirit to exist more than four weeks per quadrennium.

4
mma

The Ultimate Fighter 16: 16 random facts about the show

Posted on by Beau Dure

The Ultimate Fighter Friday: Team Carwin vs. Team Nelson Yes We’re Still on Fridays on FX But No We’re Not Live Any More debuts on … well, Friday.

Sixteen things you might not know about the cast of the show’s 16th domestic season (not counting TUF Brazil or the new international seasons in various stages of planning/production — UK vs. Australia, India):

1. Two fighters have big red or pink Mohawks. (Julian Lane, Ricky Legere Jr.)

2. Fighters include one from North Dakota (Leo Kuntz) and one from South Dakota (David Michaud). Michaud is representing his reservation, as this remarkable video shows.

3. Colton Smith is an Army Ranger with a political chip on his shoulder. “The only thing that Colton has a hard time not choking out is the plethora of liberal tree-huggers he tends to run into in the greater DC area,” says his bio at sponsor Ranger Up. I don’t know — most of the liberal tree-huggers I know in the D.C. area could probably take this guy. They work out a lot.

4. Jason South is 34. He addresses his age in his TUF bio: “Well most people are giving me shit because of my age but I think it’s going to play a big role in keeping my head in the right place.”

5. Kevin Nowaczyk’s nickname is “Give Me Your Lunch Money.” Most nicknames aren’t commands. And yet he’s so humble that he answers the TUF bio question “Why you think you will be the next Ultimate Fighter champion” with “I don’t know if I will be …” (Matthew Secor’s answer starts “I don’t think I will be” but continues “I know I will be.”)

6. Best answer to the “Why you’ll win” bio question goes to Sam Alvey: “Because the force is with me.” (He elaborates.) He also was a “big time band participant” in high school.

7. Most of Lev Magen’s fight experience is in Israel.

8. Cameron Diffley was Forrest Griffin’s assistant coach, specializing in jiu-jitsu, when the former UFC light heavyweight champion was a TUF coach.

9. Igor Araujo helps develop the jiu-jitsu of the current UFC light heavyweight champ, Jon Jones.

10. Bristol Marunde is an IFL and Strikeforce veteran who chased down a rape suspect and stopped him with a head kick.

11. Alaskan Nic Herron-Webb is nicknamed “Naptime.” His MMA specialty is “Nap-jitsu.”

12. Dom Waters’ nickname is “Sho Nuff,” not to be confused with Rodney “Sho Nuff The Master” Wallace.

13. Frank “The Crank” Camacho made his pro debut at age 16 and says he has been training to win The Ultimate Fighter since age 14. Most of his fights were on Pacific islands, but he has moved to Maryland to work with Lloyd Irvin.

14. James Chaney, one of only three cast members with a Wikipedia entry (the others are Marunde and Diffley), has fought in Russia and lists his MMA specialty as “sambo.”

15. Several cast members have fought in Zuffa’s sibling promotion Strikeforce, including Bristol Marunde, Saad Awad, Ricky Legere Jr., and Cortez Coleman. Legere and Coleman have Strikeforce wins.

16. This season had no open auditions.

Last season didn’t have a lot of drama in the house. You’d think 13 weeks in the house would make people crazier than usual, but it seems to have a sedating effect. Producers seemed to think bringing Ronda Rousey into the house would spark … something. No. What are they going to do — hit on her on camera, knowing they’ll be released into the real world in another six weeks or so?

Also, by going live each week, producers and editors only had a short time to see what had happened in the house. Storylines couldn’t really be built.

This season? Looks dramatic.

Hard-core fans might not be happy. But will the ratings be better? As Shaun Al-Shatti said at MMA Fighting — you’re either pumped or vowing not to watch a single second.

0
olympic sports

Paralympics: How about we treat participants as athletes and show the sports?

Posted on by Beau Dure

You can’t really say the U.S. media had no impact on the Paralympics. Jay-Z is part of the media, and he added a Paralympic/Olympic-specific verse to Coldplay’s Paradise at the Closing Ceremony.

The Closing Ceremony drew a peak audience of 7.7 million, by the way. That’s in Britain, of course — not here in the USA, where we could only watch via streams.

And the lack of Paralympic coverage is something NBC might need to explain when the next Olympic broadcast rights are up for negotiation. (HT: ThinkProgress)

To be fair to NBC, it’s not as if the rest of the U.S. media rushed to fill the void in Paralympics coverage.

Perhaps one reason the Paralympics don’t get much play in the USA is that we forget to think of Paralympians as athletes. A BBC roundup of leading countries, their medals, and their media led to this conclusion:

Most news coverage has focused not on results or the medal chase, but on human interest stories or curiosities, with headlines such as “Shark attack survivor wins bronze.”

Contrast that with another quote in that roundup: Paralympian Josh George via The New York Times:

Even more amazing than the fact that Londoners have opened their arms and hearts to the Paralympics is the fact that they are interested in us for our athletic ability, not the fact that we don’t spend every day in our rooms crying about the fact that we can’t walk, or are missing a limb or two.

South Park has probably said it best on several occasions: People with disabilities often just want to live as everyone else does. And maybe we should focus on wheelchair rugby as a fun sport to watch instead of trumping up the “human interest” angle. We’re all “human.” Paralympians happen to be great athletes as well.

Then again, don’t we often hear the same criticism about NBC’s Olympic coverage?

2
sports culture

Funniest athlete on Twitter: A baseball player?

Posted on by Beau Dure

I grew up a baseball fan. I am not a baseball fan today. It wasn’t just a case of getting bored with it. I got sick of the phony American exceptionalism mythology behind it. (Doubleday? Yeah, and I race unicorns.) The steroid era bugged me. And I was not impressed with the way Major League Baseball forced Washington into a horrible stadium deal it can’t afford. I’m still rooting for the Nationals … to leave town and give D.C. United that stadium.

It’s a sport with an unwritten “code” that’s even more juvenile than hockey’s. Here, stand in that box while I throw a ball at you. If you charge at me, everyone will clear the benches and act like tough guys. At least hockey players actually drop gloves and square off in a fair fight.

So imagine my surprise when I checked out Brandon McCarthy, the pitcher who was just released from the hospital a few days after needing a frightening line drive to the head forced him into surgery, and found that he is quite possibly the funniest athlete on Twitter.

His second Tweet after cranial surgery:

A day later:

After a nice shoutout from a stadium scoreboard:

And my favorite (not at all because I follow a lot of U.S. women’s national team soccer players on social networks):

4