Baseball Brawls

How about that fight between the Nationals and the Marlins? Maybe I am an abnormal person, but I do not necessarily see the point of getting yourself thrown out of the game. I think that not being intimidated by an opposing pitcher is always positive. However, isn't it better to get revenge by hitting a home run than being sent to the showers? I think there'd be more productive ways to channel that anger so that you don't get kicked out, and the team is better off.

Once the team is in the fight, the situation becomes a little bit different. Of course, no one wants to get kicked out, but you also cannot let your teammate get beat up. This is why you always see those teammates that are trying to pull everyone apart. Unfortunately, they also sometimes incidentally get into the fight, but at least they are trying to help make the situation better. All these massive brawls may be very entertaining for us to watch, but I do not think that they are the best way to get revenge. I would rather hit a home run than hit the pitcher in the face. But what do I know?
Photo by allygirl520 on Flickr

Contact Sport

Last night, power soccer definitely became a contact sport. However, even though some of the hits might have been a little bit too hard, it is nice to see aggression. Rather let the ball roll by, people are beginning to attack the ball which is positive. The only difference is that if any of you remember when we played Syracuse, we barely got hit at all. They were able to take the ball off of us without hitting chairs. There's no way they would've ever gotten called for a foul because they never touched us, but when we run into each other, they could very possibly call a foul which could award a free kick. This is what we should shoot for. We need to not be afraid to hit while at the same time having a sense of when heading out there might not be beneficial or may even be detrimental like in the aforementioned case with the free kick. Although it may not seem like it, you can be incredibly aggressive without hitting anyone. The goal of the game is to hit the ball into the goal, so obviously you need to be aggressive in that sense, but make sure that you drive the ball down the field.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Some people have a hard enough time getting one thing that they want. Imagine if you got everything you wanted and all of a sudden the two things that you wanted most in life conflicted with each other. That's exactly what happened to Ben Garland formerly of the Air Force Academy. When he was a young boy, he dreamed about going into the Air Force Academy and becoming a fighter pilot. However, he also fantasized about playing in the NFL for the Denver Broncos since he was from Colorado. Now you obviously see where I'm going with this. He went Air Force, and he played well throughout college. He was accepted to a pilot training school in Del Rio, Texas. However, the Denver Broncos also signed him as a free agent. So, there is a dilemma. Do you play for the team you always wanted to play for, or do you go into the Air Force like you always dreamed? If that were me, I would play football because I would not be brave enough to handle the Armed Forces. However, it is honorable that he wants to serve his country in a way that people like me appreciate. Whatever Ben chooses, I think he cannot really go wrong. He gets a great career either way, and he gets to do what most people will never do; he has a career he wants.
Photo by brykmantra on Flickr

Say What You Mean

I think that is interesting how well some people know how to talk. However, it is even more interesting how some people can say a lot without ever saying anything. I think about the press conferences with professional athletes apologizing for some problem they had with the law or the media or the family. There's always the same script about being sorry and apologizing to the fans, the organization, the coaches, and pretty much everyone in America or the world. They really never say anything about the event, but they seem to say a lot about being sorry. Granted, they should be sorry for what they have done, but I honestly think that it sounds too scripted which leads me to doubt the sincerity. Tell me that I'm reading into it much, and I probably am, but still when everybody says the same thing, I really wonder how many of them thought about it before they wrote it. Also, I admit that I'm not much for prewritten speeches, so that might be my bias as well. However, next time you see someone on TV apologizing for some miscellaneous offense, I bet you will be able to predict exactly what they're going to say before they say it.
Photo by rick on Flickr

Loss of a Star

Today is Friday, so here comes some fiction!

The game sped along quickly as the Jaguars and Falcons did battle. These two giants of Florida basketball were squaring off for the first time ever as the Falcons were from the Miami area whereas the Jaguars were from the Panhandle. Fate had never brought them together until this night in March. Both teams ran a high-octane offense so there was little time for even the spectators to catch their breath. This night was a little bit different for the Falcons though. As much as their coach, Dan Smith, tried to run a very balanced offense, he was blessed or perhaps cursed by having the best player in Florida on his team who ran the offense most of the time. The blessing is how he led his team to an undefeated year while playing as good as any player in recent Florida history, but the curse comes when your team doesn't know how to run without him, and he happens to be hurt during the most important game of the year. Nothing throws off a team's balance like dropping the anchor of the team. But they had to play, they had to bring their A game tonight, or this season was over.
Photo by aturkus on Flickr

Shopping for Wheelchairs

I bet that very few of you have tried shopping for a used rear wheel drive wheelchair. After our power soccer clinic on Sunday, it became incredibly obvious to me that rear wheel is the way to get more power. Not that I would automatically rise to that level just because of a new chair, but I would have the potential to raise my game to a level where I could be competitive. I have never been on the market for a used wheelchair before, so this is a bit of a new experience. However, it seems as if there are very few power soccer caliber chairs on the market. Most of the chairs are either mid-wheel or the portable type meant for people who don't need to use their wheelchairs all the time and want to fold them up. So, I just throwing this out there, but if anybody knows of a website with a good inventory of tilt wheelchairs, please let me know. I think that some people have to be selling, and I just need to find them. In fact, I will be selling my backup as well once I find a rear wheel chair. If anybody has any good leads, please let me know.

Phillie All-Stars

It is pretty interesting how the Phillies might actually have two All-Stars starters this year. As of yesterday, Chase Utley and Placido Polanco were leading second and third base respectively in the All-Star voting. Utley is not really a surprise since second base is a pretty shallow position, but I am a bit surprised about Polanco. We had him in Philadelphia, got rid of him to make room for Chase Utley, but now we have him back potentially playing beside Chase Utley on the All-Star team. It's kind of odd the way that things work out.

The Phillies might also have two more All-Stars as Jayson Werth and Shane Victorino or fourth and fifth respectively in the outfield vote. Again, I'm not overly surprised by either these, but who would have thought that a Rule 5 pick would turn into an All-Star or a failed prospect from the Dodgers would turn it around in Philadelphia? It's an exciting year to be watching the All-Star game hopefully, but I wonder about the regular season. At least we won last night and scored seven runs. Maybe this is the start of some offensive surge that will carry us to the World Series again.
Photo by dougtone on Flickr

My Weakness

Whatever the reason, I couldn't get my mind off of that pitch. I could hit a fastball, curveball, even knuckleball (although I had never faced a Tim Wakefield caliber one), but I could not handle the crazy change up. There was something deceptive about that pitch, a thinly disguised fastball. However, I just couldn't handle it. I guess it was one of those things that no matter how many hours I spent in the batting cage or how many hitting camps I went to with how many retired professionals I just could never figure out.

I think something had to do with tension. When I stepped up to the plate, I was grabbed by a desire to swing. Something in my arm muscles or perhaps everything in my body wanted me to jump on every pitch. I guess when you are jumping on every pitch, it makes sense that a change up would be your downfall. I would step up to plate telling myself to be patient and to sit back on the inevitable pitch that I knew had to be coming. But the result was always the same, it had always been and always would be my downfall, but I tried to hide it as best I could and go on bashing fastballs.
Photo by parent5446 on Flickr

World Cup Soccer vs Power Soccer

The Phillies won yesterday which is always good, but the bad news is that the US World Cup team is tied for second behind Slovenia. Somehow I doubt that Slovenia will be able to hold that top slot for very long with the United States and England right behind them, but it's kind of ironic anyway for the time. I was watching Germany versus Australia yesterday afternoon, and I began to wonder about some of the differences between soccer and power soccer. The biggest difference I noticed is that power soccer is much more dribble oriented while the World Cup match was much more focused on passing. However, I think that this difference can be accounted for by the fact that it is very difficult to lift a power soccer ball. I've only seen it lifted once or twice on YouTube and was only able to be elevated one or two inches. Therefore, power soccer players cannot make runs and try to beat the defender one-on-one while waiting for a pass to come over the top from the midfielders. Any long pass will probably get picked off by some defenseman without ever getting anywhere near its target.

Another difference I noticed was that almost every attack was based with some sort of cross to get the ball into the middle. We do cross sometimes in power soccer, but we mostly attack the middle of the field to challenge the goalie. I think this difference can accounted for because there are many fewer people on a power soccer team, so it is much easier to penetrate the middle. Since only one chair can be playing the ball at a time, why not take it to the goal?

The World Cup continues, a hopeful America can finally live up to the hype that it has brought to the past couple of Cups and put together a nice run.
Photo  by 1Happysnapper (photography) on Flickr

Tryouts

How do I choose?

Standing on the sidelines, Coach Rick Williams was caught between the proverbial rock and hard place. He had nailed down nine spots on his select travel basketball team, but that one remaining spot was giving him more trouble than the previous nine combined. On one hand, he could take Luke, a kid who was clearly not at the level of all of the other players on that team but in terms of basketball IQ and potential "player-coach" material, he was unmatched. Rick could totally see him turning into a big-time coach someday; he just knew what to say to fire up his teammates and explain what had to be done. However, as a basketball player, he could not translate all that knowledge into on court performance.

On the other side, he could take Jake. As much as Luke knew the right thing to say, Jake knew what to say to turn off his teammates. His high school coach had told Rick that the one day that Jake missed practice all year was the most relaxing and positive practice of the year. If this team was about personality, there was no way he would have a place on it. However, basketball involves talent, and boy did Jake ever have that. At a very lean six foot five and 36 inch vertical, physical talent alone could get Jake on to anything he had ever tried out for. He had never played football before his freshman year of high school, but when he walked onto the field to try out, he made varsity.

So, how do you choose? Does it really matter how "coachable" a kid is? Maybe he just needs the right type of coach. Rick wanted to think that he was the right type of coach for everyone, but he knew that wasn't true. Now the choice was his; how could he ever decide?
Photo by DRB62

What Is An Athlete Anyway?

I was thinking about the concept of the athlete after writing about a potential honor code in athletics. What exactly is an athlete? Merriam-Webster defines athlete as "a person who is trained or skilled in exercises, sports, or games requiring physical strength, agility, or stamina." This is a purely physical definition however; today, we expect athletes to be much more than just physically talented people. They should have some level of moral and ethical behavior as well as being a talented enough orator to handle the often overly critical media with grace and charisma. However, is this expecting too much from these athletes who are still obviously human? I think about how, in high school and college, the athlete needs to hold his or her grades up as well as perform at a high level on the court or field. However, what if the most talented athlete in the school had no desire to study? He or she would not be able to play on the team and therefore could not be an athlete representing that school. I think that these measures are valuable as they encourage the athlete to be more than just an athlete. We all get sick of hearing the term "student-athlete" because it is long and somewhat awkward, but that is what we expect of athletes while they are in school. They should be able to perform as a student as well as an athlete. I do not know what you would term a professional athlete because we expect them to obviously be an athlete as well as a role model or perhaps an example. Therefore, should the athlete be termed as the "example-athlete?" Personally, I think that even if we do not use this term, the athlete should be aware of the position that he or she holds. When I was a young child, I conformed to the rest of society by saying that Michael Jordan was my favorite player. I never raised him to the idol-like level as some people did, but in the mid-90s, who didn't want to Be Like Mike? With a player with such great media exposure, he or she will be will be perceived as a role model to follow even if he or she hasn't done anything worthy of following (this is a general statement, not targeted at Michael Jordan). Here is where the problem lies; some athletes who are perceived as role models are really not people children should be emulating. How to solve this? It is either going to take a change of the values of professional athletes or a more discerning eye from the public to see through the athletes who are just plain athletes, not "example-athletes." There are plenty of role models in the world today, but not everyone who happens to be in the news and be extraordinarily talented in one area is by necessity a perfect example to follow otherwise.
© 2009 Jean-Marc Kuffer / CC BY 2.0