Run And Tell That

Runners have always been a strange breed to me. Back in high school, I was buddies with a guy named Joey Norcio. Joe was an all-around good guy: smart (in the IB program), funny (had a very sarcastic, subversive sense of humor), and a lights-out shooter on the basketball court…except our high school freshman team had a thousand guards, which unfortunately never allowed him to get consistent playing time. Joey’s 1 strike against him: he ran cross country.

I don’t want to get into a whole running is not a sport thing. I have respect for runners as athletes, and I actually think running (and track and field in general) is underrated as a spectator sport as well. I fully endorse it as part of any athlete’s training program, but I used to despise running during soccer or basketball practice, and I equally hated it at the gym as an adult.

Ok, now that's just uncalled for.

At some point, I actually started to enjoy running though…your lungs filling up with air, the burning in your legs, the little rush of endorphins or whatever that you would get when you were finished…now that I have confined myself to the stationary bike for cardio training to rest my constantly ailing knees, ankles, and achilles, I actually miss the treadmill.

But even so, I always felt it takes an odd person to run just for the sake of running. To hear runners talk about things like heart rate zones, cadence, and how many miles they ran the other night is enough to make me want to induce my own vomiting. And you could make a perfectly legitimate argument that anyone that is into weightlifting or bodybuilding in a similarly serious way is just as nutty. In truth, tracking your diet down to every individual calorie or gram of protein or mapping out your entire training regimen weeks in advance is just as geeky as what any runner does…and yet there’s something about runners – maybe it’s the kind of holier than thou, running is gospel attitude a lot of them have – that makes them more off-putting...

...or maybe it has to do with the fact that they look like the hipster doofuses of the sports world.

Either way, I maintain that there’s got to be something in a runner’s genetic makeup that makes them different from non-runners. As a means to improve yourself as an athlete overall, I think running is great, but to be someone’s thing in and of itself is just weird to me. It was a point that wasn’t lost on Joey Norcio, as we would often tell him that there was just something “off” about runners…to which he would only smile and acceptingly nod. What could he do? The rest of us weren’t runners. He knew we couldn’t possibly understand.

Week 4 (I Guess) Beltway Baseball Breakdown

So, remember that time that I decided to try to do a weekly beltway baseball breakdown? Yea, well maybe it should’ve been monthly or tri-weekly or something along those lines. Anyway, 3 weeks passed, some stuff happened, some games were played, and we’re pretty much at the same place we were on August 8th…well, almost. Let’s get to it.

How ‘bout them O’s, hun? Back on August 8th, Baltimore was 59-51 amidst completing a 3 game sweep of Seattle. They had just come off their 11th straight win in 1-run games, which had them 4.5 games back of New York for the division lead and right in the thick of the Wild Card race. This was all despite an unfathomable -54 run differential. Fast-forward 3 weeks later, and that streak is up to 13 in a row, they are only 3.5 back of the suddenly vulnerable looking Yankees, and they would be in the do-or-die Wild Card game if the regular season ended today. At 71-57, they’ve actually improved on their still abysmal run differential (-39), and now they are doing it with guys I’ve never heard of like Lew Ford and Nate McLouth to boot. They clearly have befuddled all the so-called baseball experts, and it’s gotten to the point where they don’t even know what to write about the Orioles anymore. In the little blurb about the O’s in ESPN’s latest power rankings, the Worldwide Leader mentioned a totally irrelevant Baltimore trade involving Steve Trachsel that happened 5 years ago…what?

My beloved Nats, on the other hand, have been scuffling a little as of late, losing 5 in a row and 6 of their last 10. Those same power rankings mentioned before still have them number 1 in the whole league, and they own a 4 game margin over Atlanta in the NL East, but they don’t look quite as invincible as they did a week or 2 ago when they were nearing a double digit win streak. Their bats all cooled off at once, and last night Strasburg actually appeared human, getting shelled for 7 runs in only 5 innings in a 9-0 loss to Miami. It could just be a bad 5 games in what has been a very good season for Washington up to this point, but you have to wonder if this whole “Stras-gate” thing is going to eventually take its toll on the clubhouse (if it hasn’t already). The idea that you are going to lose your best player at some point prior to the postseason has got to be a serious mind-f***. Let’s hope GM Mike Rizzo and company know what they’re doing.

Honesty...Don't Believe The Hype

Everybody Loves Raymond fans might recognize the title of this post, and while I’m sure I will harp to my future kids that honesty is always the best policy, good ol’ Ray Barone may have been on to something there. For example, I once read that if you were to ever get pulled over by a cop for speeding that fessing up to your transgression was the best way to go. I tried this approach the last time I got stopped, and it got me nowhere fast. Was there a reason you were going so fast, sir? “No, not really, sir…I will try to slow down next time.” Now, 1 occurrence is a pretty small sample size. The cop may have been a complete d*** in general, or he needed to meet his quota for the month, or there could have been a dozen other reasons why I wouldn’t have escaped without a ticket with that particular guy at that exact moment, but no matter how you slice it honesty didn’t pay off for me in that instance. If it happened again, I would have just played dumb. Do you know how fast you were going, sir? “55, why is anything wrong?” The speed limit’s 40 miles per hour here, sir. “Oh, well I thought it was 55. Look, that sign up ahead says 55 mph. I didn’t realize that it was only 40 back there. Oh, whoa is me…” You get the idea.

"Sorry, officer...I didn't know I couldn't do that."

Put in another situation of that kind this past weekend, I decided to go the other way. Playing basketball with Krissy, Mac, and others at Notre Dame of Maryland in Towson, we were stopped by a middle aged gentleman who inquired about our student status (we know people who go there, which is why we know about the gym in the 1st place, but none of the people playing at the time had any affiliation with the school). The guy was perfectly nice, well dressed, handsome, etc…he had the look of a guy who had just finished playing golf and was about to take the wife out on the boat that evening. He may very well have been the assistant band director for all I know, but he had a college president/dean/administrator look about him. Do you go to school here? “Yes, sir.” Which school? “Pharmacy.” Ahhh yes, might I ask you who the dean of the school of pharmacy is? “I’m sorry, I can’t think of the name. Sorry, I am a 1st year student. It’s right on the tip of my tongue though.” That’s ok. Can I see your student ID? “Well, I don’t have it on me actually. I left it in my car. Do you want me to run and get it real quick?” No, that’s ok as long as you’re telling me the truth. You wouldn’t lie to me, would you? “No, sir. Is there a team practice we need to leave the court for or anything?” [Giving myself bonus points for this response; my body language and response must have been convincing enough, but my own question might have redirected the focus of the interrogation just long enough to throw Dr. Dean Fancypants off the scent…] No, nothing scheduled for a few more hours. We just sometimes have people sneak into the building to use the gym. It’s for students, faculty, and staff members only, and we just need to make sure. “Oh, ok. I completely understand, sir.” Just make sure you guys have your IDs next time. Have fun. “Thank you, sir. Have a good one.”

Jiminy Cricket can go b*** himself.

I don’t consider myself a particularly good liar, but that seemed to get the job done. I found myself on the other side of this conversation quite a bit back at UMBC, where part of my job was the de facto head of security for the school gym. Early on, I probably left the occasional "sneaky-sneaker" to his own devices if he gave me the ol’ I forgot my ID line, but as time went on that changed. Eventually, trespassers had gotten so brazen that I wouldn’t have been clearly as nice as "Old Man ND" was to me. You go to school here? Yea? No ID? Hit the bricks! In fact, what started out as guilt eventually turned to glee whenever I got the chance to kick someone out of the gym. But in this instance for us, it all worked out. A little halfcourt basketball game never hurt anybody…which shows that in certain situations a smidge of dishonesty isn’t so bad after all.

Resisting The Urge And A Two Best Friends Play Edition Of YouTube Government Friday

Sigh…there’s nothing like sitting at your desk while 3 of the most unathletic people in the whole office (probably exaggerating a little, but not that far off) have an in-depth discussion on the Olympics, progressive athlete performance over the last 50 years, different training methods, and every subject in between…I’m Tony Kornheiser. I had to stop from interjecting myself into the convo at least 3 times, but it was worth it. Allowing myself to get sucked in wouldn't have been pretty. Who am I to judge the geekiness/lack of athleticism of other people given my pretty meager athletic ceiling anyway? Who am I kidding? I’m like Bo Jackson next to these sloppy-looking buffoons! Onward!

Not much else to report on this glorious government Friday. How about a fresh new edition of “Two Best Friends Play?” The Bear Grylls episode is still the gold standard by my book, but the episode for the game “Sleeping Dogs” that just came out this week is the best one in a long while…too many great moments to count. “Wei Shen, motherf***er.” Out...

Are You Ready For Some [Fantasy] Football? Umm Yea, I Guess

Ahhh, August…the month each year where every fantasy football player is filled with hope and optimism. You do your research, draft your team, and look at your roster with the utmost amount of confidence. Only this year, my confidence is tempered. In 2010, my team pretty much steamrolled its way to winning the league championship. Did cockiness seep into my psyche? Probably…did my team success hinge on picking Matt Forte in the 5th round and Arian Foster in the 9th? Definitely…looking back, if I had to make a pie chart between “smart” and “lucky” for those picks, how would it look? Maybe 30% smartness, and 70% pure luck…but that’s the way fantasy football goes.

Most teams look pretty even the day after your draft…it’s who gets hurt, who drafts Arian Foster in the 9th round or Jimmy Graham in the 7th, or who picks Cam Newton off of waivers that usually decides a league…the bad side of that lesson I learned all too well last year, as I outsmarted myself into taking Michael Vick 1st overall. I maintain that part of my logic was sound: that if Vick stayed healthy, it was like getting 2 starting players in 1 (a top 10 quarterback and a top 20 running back). However, I kind of ignored the other most logical stat about Vick, which was that he had only played a full 16 games in 1 of his previous 8 seasons leading into last year.

Boh...

So, after having our draft last night I guess you could say I’m cautiously optimistic about this year’s team. Doing a keeper league for the 1st time was odd for me, especially considering my best options from last year’s injury-riddled team were contract holdout Mike Wallace and possible one-hit-wonder DeMarco Murray. I decided on Murray based mostly on the consistency of running backs over that of wide receivers in general, and the rest of my draft kind of followed that approach. My 2 sexiest picks (Matthew Stafford and Brandon Marshall) aren’t even that sexy, and the rest of my main backs and receivers (Jeremy Maclin, Jonathan Stewart, Shonn Greene, and Anquan Boldin) are all more workmanlike than superstar-ish. Antonio Gates’ health seems to decline every year, but he should still be a productive tight end. (I have to admit part of me made this pick because I’ve wanted Gates on my team for years, but could never seem to land him.) Big Ben seemed like a safe insurance pick as a backup quarterback, and I thought a couple fliers on Evan Royster (always like to have at least 1 Redskin, and he seems to be the only truly healthy runner in an always murky Mike Shanahan backfield), Danny Amendola (looked like he could be Sam Bradford’s “Wes Welker Lite” before getting injured last year), and Owen Daniels (steady if not spectacular in the past) were well worth it.

C'mon, Stafford...don't let me down.

Justifiably so, it’s hard for me to get too up or down on my team right now. If at the very least everyone stays healthy and plays around what their average performance has been throughout their careers, I should have a decent team. Obviously, if Stafford, Marshall, and, let’s say, Murray have monster years, I could be very good…but there are potential landmines too. There are guys on my roster who have a history of missing games (Stafford, Murray, Gates), guys who haven’t always played up to their potential (Marshall and Greene), and guys who might not have much left in the tank (Boldin). And that’s not even including the unknowns that fantasy football always seems to have in store for you as well…as always, hang on to your seats, kids; it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

The Dwight Howard Trade: Maybe It Actually Took 5 Days For This To Sink In

In my mind, it really couldn't have happened any other way.

Part dos of the “way overdue” blog posts revolves around none other than Dwight Howard and the blockbuster trade that sent him to La La Land. My 1st reaction was, “What took so long?” Howard eventually landing in LA was something that was predicted on this little blog for weeks...and weeks...not exactly a bold prediction, but it just seemed blatantly obvious to me from the outset of this whole D-12 fiasco. That Howard had handpicked Brooklyn as his destination of choice was foolish in its own right. Why Howard was ever so desperate to land at what has mostly been a weak-to-mediocre franchise since its inception was beyond me. And playing with Deron Williams and Joe Johnson might have worked out pretty well, but given all the other pieces the Nets would have to give up to get Howard back in any deal it seemed impossible that the cupboard wouldn’t be completely bare aside from Brooklyn’s hypothetical big 3. The Lakers seemed like the only logical destination from day 1, as Howard would get to go to a big market team where he will no doubt be challenging for championships the rest of his time there, and he could get a chance to pursue all the other extraneous non-basketball stuff he seems to covet as well.

Reaction number 2 was that on paper the Lakers could be really good next year…like, really good. Much like any paper champion though, there are a lot of things that could derail the Lakers next season. 1st of all, they are old. We all know about Kobe’s mileage, but it should be interesting to see if Metta World Peace can play next year…like, at all. And Steve Nash is now 38, and no longer has Phoenix’s mythical training staff to work their magic on him either. And did I mention Howard is coming off major season-ending back surgery as well? No, I didn’t? Ok…so there’s all that, and the questions of how this team will play on the court too. Who will dominate the ball and initiate the offense (Nash or Kobe)? Nash is a perfect pick-and-roll point guard, but Kobe does his best work in isolation plays. Will they actually use Pau Gasol how he should be used (down on the low block), or will he continue to be miscast as a screener/high post jumpshooter like he was last season? Will Howard be ok doing the dirty work (which he’s great at, by the way), or will he actually want the offense run through him like he demanded last season in Orlando? Also, the other best teams (Miami, OKC, Boston) perfected their small-ball lineups last year. Everyone is chiming in about how Gasol and Howard will be a matchup nightmare for anyone, but will LA be able to keep them both on the court at the same time if 1 of those teams counters with 1 of their speedy lineups. No matter how you look at it though, the Lakers should at least land somewhere between good and very good no matter what. LA was good enough to grab the West’s number 3 seed last year, and the best players Howard has ever played with up to this point in his career are Jason Richardson, Rashard Lewis, and Jameer Nelson…yikes.

How Gasol and Howard play off 1 another could be very interesting to watch next season.

My 3rd thought was this: f*** the Lakers…no, just…seriously. They always seem to fleece other teams in trades, and whether it’s through a trade or free agency they always get the exact guy they want to boot: Shaq, Gasol, World Peace, Nash, and now Howard. In the 4 team deal for Howard, what exactly did the Lakers have to give up? Andrew Bynum, a couple tomato cans, and some draft picks (which are garbage draft picks anyway because LA is always too good to be in the lottery). A day or 2 before the trade went down, there was talk that the Lakers would have to throw Gasol along with Bynum into any Howard deal, but they got away without having to even do that…seriously, what the…if I talk about it anymore, my head’s going to explode.

This brings me to my 4th and final thought: what the f***, Orlando?!? Listen, I was actually with you when you looked like you were just going to stand pat. The deals that were thrown out there before with Brooklyn and Houston just didn’t have enough meat on the bone to make it worth your while. You looked prepared to wait for someone to blow you away with a better offer, or else you would just play out the next season and take your chances that you could convince Howard to resign…but to give Dwight Howard away in this trade after all that is criminal. This is basically what the Magic got back in the trade: Arron Afflalo (nice player but nothing special), Al Harrington (who flourished in George Karl’s system but who hasn’t looked great elsewhere the last few seasons), salary cap relief by getting Richardson and Chris Duhon off the books, and those tomato cans and crappy draft picks that were mentioned above. In the words of Tony Kornheiser, “That’s it, that’s the list.” My only other thought is (and you can bet your sweet a** I will be putting a hyperlink to this in future posts if it comes true) that they know more about Dwight Howard’s health than they are letting on, and they feel that Howard’s surgery and subsequent rehab makes him a risk to ever get back to where he once was as a player. If that winds up to be the case, this will be the type of thing that a 30 for 30 gets made about a few years down the road…if not, Orlando, you got some ‘splaining to do.

5 Bests From The 2012 Summer Olympics

The worst part about slacking on the blog front is that all the topics you find interesting enough to write about start to pile up. So while the end of the Summer Olympics and the Dwight Howard-to-the-Lakers trade stories are both old news by now, I found myself wanting to chime in about both. I will go with the Olympics 1st since there will be no need to talk about them for another 4 years after this. I felt like I took the Olympics for granted this year…I scoffed at them for being “boring” once the games started, but now that they are over I’m not sure what I’m going to watch on TV until football season starts. With that, here’s 5 “bests” from the 2012 Summer Olympics…

Best gender…While Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, and men’s basketball all had their moments, it was the ladies that put their collective stamp on these games. From gymnastics to beach volleyball, the women stole the show. In comparing men and women, this was most apparent in soccer, where winning the most whistles by flopping and diving seems to be more of the object of the game than actually scoring in the men’s game. This isn’t really a new viewpoint, but I continue to grow more and more tired of watching a male player act as if he’s been shot in the face, get carted off, and then return to play minutes later. Can’t this crap be legislated against? Like if you have to be put on a gurney, you can’t return to the field the rest of the game or something. That’s in stark contrast to the women’s game, where if a player breaks her leg it appears as if it will take the rest of the team to drag her away to get her off of the field…big ups to women’s soccer.

Best recovery…This goes to McKayla Maroney, who had an “agony of defeat” moment in the individual vault event in women’s gymnastics. Maroney, who is considered far and away the best vaulter in the world, botched her 2nd vault, which resulted in her winning only the silver medal in the event. She was initially scorned for acting, for lack of a better word, b****y afterwards, snubbing hugs from her competitors and making a stank-face that immediately spawned a series of “McKayla’s not impressed” memes worldwide. Once again proving that self-deprecating humor is always the way to go though, Maroney posted a pic of herself and 2 of her Olympic teammates sporting the infamous face (obviously poking fun at herself) days later. So, Maroney gets a pass…not only is she a teenager who just had the most disappointing moment of her career in that moment, but she seems to not take herself too seriously as well.

Take that, Internet.

Best freak of nature…2 words: Usain Bolt. Bolt became the only man to ever go back-to-back in the 100 and 200 meter dashes. I’m not sure what else to say other than that he is disgustingly fast. Even facing doubters, he wins with ease, and he steps off the throttle the last 25 meters of these races just to wave to the crowd, shake hands, and kiss babies.

Best display of rugged masculinity…It doesn’t sound like water polo is that great of a live spectator sport from everything I’ve heard, but watching on TV from the comfort of my futon couch it was my favorite event to watch other than the more mainstream sports. It looks awkward and clumsy at times, but it’s basically trying to shoot at a goal while swimming nonstop with someone trying to drown you the entire time. I never thought I’d have an appreciation for a sport where the men wear banana-hammocks, but these guys are big, burly, hairy-chested dudes. I imagine them going ice-fishing and lumberjacking in their spare time. (If it sounds like I had a bit of a man-crush on some of them, guilty as charged I guess.) The girls are just as tough, and while I’m sure they probably are very feminine and lovely outside of the pool, I wouldn’t want to walk into a dark alley with them either.

Stellaaaaaaa!!!

Best chemistry…While the USA men’s basketball team played a bunch of teams from different countries who had played together for years, I believe the most in-sync duo actually belonged to the Americans. It was as much fun to watch LeBron James and Kevin Durant play together as anyone I can remember during Olympic play ever. For all their efforts to put together a true “team,” USA Basketball is still a glorified all-star squad compared to the teams put together by Spain, Argentina, and Lithuania. But from the 1st game it was clear that something special was brewing between LeBron and KD. It wasn’t just the hot-potato, your turn-my turn type of game we’re used to seeing…the 2 of them, while rivals in the NBA, seemed to set each other up, play off each other, and genuinely like each other. And unlike an all-star or summer league game, the results actually mattered, which made their coexistence that much more important. Their ability to feed of one another seemed to lead the way for the rest of the guys, and the rest of the team just kind of fell into place after that. As a fan of the game, it was something pretty cool (and, honestly, pretty unusual) to see.