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By
The Sports Curmudgeon |
Posted: July 20, 2005 10:07AM |
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Horseracing is a sport on the decline here in the US; even us horse racing enthusiasts have to acknowledge that as a fact. In Qatar, camel racing is a really big deal; it attracts a lot of interest. The concept of licensing of jockeys for camels seems never to have caught on there and so the idea is to find the lightest person possible for the task. And the zealous pursuit of that objective led to children as young as 4-years-old being strapped into the "saddles" on racing camels. Not surprisingly, international human rights and children's advocacy groups have protested this practice. And so, technology has come to the rescue: Recently, the first camel races in Qatar have been run using small robots as jockeys. Given that the robots are electronic devices that can be controlled from afar by various signaling techniques, this opens up newer and better ways for nefarious folks to "influence the outcome" of specific races. This is the dawn of race fixing for the 21st century.
About ten days ago, I read that the NHL/NHLPA agreement that ended the hockey lockout was a document slightly in excess of 600 pages. I have to believe that because I have not seen the document and would certainly not expend the effort to read it all even if it were delivered to me on a tray with chocolate truffles all around it. Yesterday, I read that the lockout in the NHL extended over 301 days; that seems about right. So, these goofs took a day - on average - to produce two pages of text in the final agreement. That's slow enough to qualify as the progress on some kind of insignificant UN resolution. (Is there any other kind of UN resolution?) I want to say unequivocally here that both Gary Bettman and Bob Goodenow should have the decency to resign their positions in acknowledgement that they were both utter failures in their stewardship of the important elements of professional hockey in North America. To use the phrase for abjectly embarrassing oneself from The Right Stuff, they both "screwed the pooch."
Dave Thomas of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram observed that the NHL players will be held to a stringent drug-testing regimen as a result of the recent collective bargaining agreement:
"It is anticipated that among the banned substances will be whatever the players' union was on while negotiating its way into the new collective bargaining agreement."
There have been hundreds of stories about youth sports and abusive parents and coaches who lack perspective in such venues. This one might be the worst of all time; if not, it is certainly in the bottom ten. A youth baseball coach in western Pennsylvania is accused of paying one of his 7-year-old baseball players $25 to throw a ball and hit another kid ON HIS OWN TEAM in the head so that the teammate would be injured and could not play the league's mandated three innings per game. The alleged victim here is 8-years-old and is autistic. [Read that again and let it sink in; the coach allegedly tried to arrange for an injury to an 8-year-old autistic boy.] After the autistic kid was hit in the head and the groin area with balls thrown by this teammate, the mother of the autistic child asked the "assailant" why he did that. The kid then ratted out the coach.
For the record, the coach has denied all of this. And I have to confess that I hope that he is absolutely right and that all of this is a monumental misunderstanding of what happened there. I spent many, many hours of my life involved with youth sports in my local area and I think that the vast majority of coaches for youth sports teams are positively motivated people of extraordinary generosity. Yes, there are a few who take things a bit more seriously than they ought to, but even those people are well meaning and have the best interests of the kids at heart. So, I want this allegation to be completely off base. But if it is on target and if this coach actually did what he is alleged to have done, I hope they put him under the local jail -- after, of course, the autistic victim has an opportunity to play with an electrical switch that will direct a voltage straight to the coach's "sensitive body parts." I'd give the kid about two or three hours to have this kind of interaction with his coach... Please, let this not be a true story!!!
Jim Parker died yesterday at age 71. Parker was the first NFL offensive lineman to be inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame after a long and very successful career with the Baltimore Colts. I don't recall which of his teammates said this about Parker, but one of the Colts at the time - or maybe it was even one of the coaches there? - said that Parker blocked out the sun and all the pass rushers at the same time. Jim Parker, John Hannah, Bob Brown, Chuck Bednarik and Anthony Munoz were the best offensive linemen that I ever saw play football. With all of them in their prime, even I could have run behind that offensive line for about 100 yards per game! RIP, Jim Parker.
Speaking of offensive linemen in the NFL, the last time we heard from Brock Lesnar and his aspirations to become an NFL player, he had decided to try his hand as an offensive lineman. Evidently, that did not work out for him as well as he might have expected. Charlie Walters reported recently in the St. Paul Pioneer-Press that Lesnar is in negotiations with Vince McMahon to return to the WWE as well as with a wrestling organization in Japan. Additionally, he is talking with the folks who put on the World's Strongest Man competitions; he obviously has a lot of irons in the fire at the moment. Nonetheless, given that Lesnar weighs somewhere in the vicinity of 300 lbs, I think it is safe to assume that he will not be in negotiations with the folks who recruit jockeys for the camel races in Qatar any time soon...
Here's another piece of minor league baseball news. Next month, Bobby Bragan will manage the Fort Worth Cats for one game against the Coastal Bend Aviators. That will make the 87-year-old Bragan the oldest person to manage a professional baseball game. Bragan will be seven days older than Connie Mack was when Mack managed his last game with the Philadelphia Athletics (later the Kansas City A's and now the Oakland A's) back in 1950. Of course, Connie Mack had an advantage that Bragan did not have; Mack owned the team and was never in jeopardy of being fired by a whimsical owner...
Finally, an observation by Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle:
"The Giants will honor Gaylord Perry on July 23, and the first 10,000 fans in attendance will be patted down by the home-plate ump."
But don't get me wrong, I love sports...
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By
Cindy W. |
Posted: July 20, 2005 11:07AM |
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I'm from Pittsburgh/Western PA where this event happened, and I'm also the parent of two autistic kids. It seems that the story is true from what I'm hearing. Now he has changed his story 3x -- so I'm going with the story that the kid who ratted was telling the truth. I just may go to the courthouse for his preliminary hearing and throw a few balls at his head on the way in.
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By
Joe Parker |
Posted: July 20, 2005 2:07PM |
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They should give out one of he following at Gaylord Perry Night: A spitoon, or commemorative jars of Vasaline.
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By
The Sports Curmudgeon |
Posted: July 20, 2005 11:07PM |
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I really don't pretend to know if the coach is guilty of what he ia accused of doing. But IF HE IS, I think that your going to the courthouse and tossing a few balls at his noggin would be letting him off easy. Hurting ANY kid is despicable behavior for an adult in a position of "authority"; hurting an autistic kid - or causing him to be hurt - is well beyond despicable on the scale of human behaviors.
I do want this story to be proven false because I naively cling to the hope that no adult could be that crass. I fear I might have to give up that hope.
Since you are the parent of two autistic children, let me say that you may have a "fast track to sainthood" waiting for you. I don't know that I would have had the strength or the will to deal with that in my life...
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