Kaninhop!

When I was a fractious youth I worked in a show jumping stable. I've never lost my appreciation and enjoyment of those equine athletes; they earn their oats, that's for sure.

But I'm not sure I'm ready for the bunny-wabbit version of this. "Kaninhop" involves getting the fluffy little rascals to complete a miniature jumping course complete with oxers and knock-down rails.

I'm not sure if this is adorable, or just freaking weird.

But I do know that these rabbit fanciers will need to train little mouse riders before I'm willing to drop $80.00 for a seat at the Devon Rabbit Show Open Jumper Finals.Call me a curmudgeon, if you will. But then, I'll bet the USET has never had to worry about this;

"Miss Fehlen points out important practical reasons for keeping competing rabbits leashed: 'We use them in tournaments for safety,' she said. 'Just think of what would happen if a male were to break free. We want to avoid uncontrolled reproduction. It has happened before.'"

And let's just NOT go there, okay..?

Qualified

The U.S. Women's National Team qualified for the finals of the Women's World Cup today, winning 1-0 over Italy to go through 2-0 on aggregate.This would once have been a "dog bites woman" story, but this year has been very different from the qualifiers the USWNT has played from all the way back to 1991.

For one thing, the team did not go through at the top of the CONCACAF group; that would be Canada, led by Christine Sinclair. Mexico, as always staffed with U.S. collegiate players from Mexico, went second.So the USWNT had first to defeat Costa Rica for third place, and then beat the sixith place European team - Italy - for a spot in the finals.

And the other real difference is that the U.S. doesn't have either an individual player or a group of players significantly better than the best in Europe or Brazil.

Instead, this U.S. team has showed itself to be; often flawed at the back, where missed communication has led to several ugly goals or good chances for the opposition; lacking the controlling midfield that was key to American success in 1991 and 1999, and especially sterile up front, where the only real consistently successful weapon has been Abby Wambach.I've talked about this before; Wambach is a genuinely great player, but her ability makes her a perfect target and she tends to be badly over-used by a U.S. midfield that lacks passing dexterity and control and has no real wingers. The U.S. tends to go hey-diddle-diddle right through the middle, where it exposes the defensive ineptitude of most of the rest of CONCACAF as well as the clumsy soccer played by most of the women's teams from South America, Africa and Asia.But the Germans have proved in the sternest fashion, by beating the Americans to the Cup the past eight years, that they have solved Wambach. Four years ago the brilliance of Marta combined with the tight marking that neutralized Wambach to allow Brazil to put a hurting on a badly coached, demoralized, and overage U.S. team.

The change has been in part because the northern Europeans always had, and the Brazilians have gained, the skills they needed to play world-class football. But in part is has been because the U.S. team that burst on the world like an explosion in 1991 was a truly brilliant squad made of uniquely gifted players. We only partially realized at the time how good the Ninety-oners were; Mia, Tiff, Loudy, Brandi, Joy, Kristine, Michelle, Brianna...we can see now that they have to be considered one of the great teams of history, and the modern USWNT looks smaller only in the long shadow they cast now that they are gone.Two goals over the hapless Italians is just sad. And the lack of goalscoring isn't an aberration; the US has had difficulty scoring against decent teams all year. This year the U.S. begins its campaign for the Women's World Cup in an unusual position, as a challenger, and not a favored one at that.

I will be cheering and hoping for glory in Germany. But this year I suspect my support will, like many other WNT fans, be tinged with more than a little nervous anxiety. For the American women will be landing in Germany next spring not as the Team of Destiny, but the Team of Doubts.

The Offside Rule

One curious thing I've noticed is how often we know so little about what we do.

The past month I've been helping out coaching the kid soccer (U-8) team on which a friend's son plays defense. I don't pretend to be a good coach of the game in general but I do know goalkeeping and defense tactics, so I've been helping out with the 'keepers. Goaltending is tenuous at the kid level - it requires a level of concentration you just don't have at seven or eight. I'm pleased when my little goalies just remember to focus on stopping shots, never mind the game tactics.But as a bye-the-bye I tend to get volunteered to run the line at the kiddo games.

Linesman (I despise the "referee's assistant" term that FIFA now insists on. You judge the sideline, you're a linesman) is really a simple job about 95% of the time. You watch the play and assess who was last in contact with the ball when it goes into touch (i.e. over the side line).

It's the final 5% that seems to give most soccer parents and volunteer coaches trouble, and that's calling Offside.Soccer "offside" is a VERY judgement call. But the fundamentals of running the line aren't. You need to be level with the last defender, you need to watch both the lead attacker AND the player with the ball. You need to know the Laws of the Game.

I'm always amazed at the number of volunteer linesmen who loiter about the midfield stripe, who fail to make the call when one of the kiddos is clearly offside, or who don't know the simple facets of the rule, like the fact that there is no offside on a throw-in or a corner kick.It has always seemed to me (at least since I got old enough to understand the connection) incumbent on a person interested in anything, whether it be sport or politics or lovemaking, to learn all that he or she can about the thing in order to be the most adept, the most creative, the best informed about it, and the best - in terms of satisfying themselves and those involved with them - at whatever it is.That often doesn't seem to be the case. And it makes me wonder; why?

Extinct Beavers

The Portland Beavers professional baseball team played their last game of the season today.Now that's not particularly interesting, really. One form of "Beavers" or another have had a closing day in some part of Portland or other since the early years of the 20th Century. So the last ballgame of the season shouldn't be a big deal.

And especially for these Portland Beavers. AAA affiliate of the San Diego Padres, the 2010 edition of the team sucked about the usual amount of pipe that a post-2000 Beavers squad was expected to; they lost 85 games and finished 15 and a half games behind Tacoma in the PCL-North. This is no fluke for the Bevos - over the past decade the team has won the PCL-North exactly once, in 2004. It had never won the league. Ever.Before this season's opener a total of 353 field players - an average of 39 players a year - have suited up for the team at least once...and that's not counting pitchers. I recall reading that the 2009 squad used something like 68 or 69 players. That's not a baseball team, that's a freaking food riot in Karachi.

Ridiculous.

Over the past six season the Portland baseball club has never had a winning season, losing a total of 476 games over that time. In fact, the club has had only two winning seasons since the resumption of AAA baseball in Portland in 2001, and one of these, 2002, was a "winning" season by a margin of a single game.

As a Padres farm the Beavers sucked. Their hitting sucked, their fielding sucked, their pitching sucked. They were sucky to all fields. They sucked at home and on the road.

And, worse than the overall suckiness, their suckitude didn't even count for anything.Minor league baseball is a joke, a sham. Even given that professional sports are a silly thing in general (although certainly not all that much sillier than much of what humans fiddle their time away with) minor league baseball is an especially vile mockery, a jape for the teams to pretend to play a season's campaign, a ridiculous and meaningless waste of time and money for the spectator to view.

For the simple reason that the minor leagues, most of them, from the tiniest Rookie League outpost to the mightiest of Triple-A franchises, are chattel, sockpuppets, slaves to the major league teams that own them.

The Beavers' entire reason for being is to cook the meat served in San Diego. The only reality that matters on the field in Portland is the individual stats of the players, their hopes of getting the callup to the Show, the managers and coaches daily vigil to see who has the Right Stuff.Wins? Losses? Pennant races?

Who cares.

The point of the Portland Beavers, from the middle Fifties until this afternoon, was to raise players for the Bigs. Not to win diddly-squat.

Not surprisingly, the response to this sham was underwhelming. At the death of professional baseball in Portland for the fourth time* the total number of season ticket holders for the Beavers was 150.

One hundred fifty. That's right. Fewer than show up to a typical high school baseball game, barely enough to support a kid's football club.Going to a typical Beaver's game was like going to a wake in a public park. The huge old barn of Civic Stadium was virtually silent to the point where you could hear the pop of even the curveballs and sliders into the catcher's mitt and the barking of the vendors sounded lost and echoing amid the emptiness. The fans voted with their butts about this mockery, choosing to stay away in droves. The article about the club's finale noted that in nine years the place sold out thrice: the opener in 2001, the final game, and some fireworks display in 2004.

Three sellouts.In nine years.

And yet when the old rodent finally croaked the usual suspects were out kicking dirt on the city father's shoes. Oh, dear, but the mayor and his cronies didn't do enough. Oh, the lack of vision! Oh, the failure and the weeping! Oh, for the lost glories of the bat and ball! Can you still hold you head up, Portlandia, having lost the castorine jewel in your crown?Hogwash. Horsepuckey. Nonsense.

Baseball has left, again, because the minor leagues are a bad joke.

For the same reason that nobody goes to the racetrack to see the horses warm up, nobody pays to see a couple of nameless kids scuffle in an alley. Because the team had no real stars, no permanent players to care about, because nothing that happened today mattered next week or next month. Because there was no team, no core, no living thing, but just an empty uniform filled with faceless names that moved on before we could care.

I used to love baseball. When I lived in Chicago I followed the Cubs, in Philadelphia, the Phillies. I cared about the games, knew the players, the teams, the stats. I was a typical baseball fan and you don't want to hear about it.

But moving to Portland opened my eyes to what the rest of the country gets for "baseball". It's a sad, tattered zombie, staggering along on the fumes of the game's past and the lingering affection of an older generation. The very fact that it survives as paying entertainment says a lot about willingness of baseball fans to accept any dross rather than face the reality that their proud city is nothing but a meat locker for someplace else far away.

The major leagues killed the minors. I'd rather see nothing at all than the bitter mockery that the minors have made of the game.

So go, Beavers. In your present sickly state, who needs you?

Come back if you plan to play for keeps.

Otherwise?

Forget it.* Note: The original Portland baseball club was formed in 1901 in the then Northwest League. It merged with the nascent Pacific Coast League in 1903 but folded 14 years later; that was #1. Another "Beavers" club was formed in 1919. That organization played through the glory years of the PCL, from the Ragtime Era until the Dodgers and Giants moved west in the mid-Fifties. That team, by 1972 a Dodgers farm, moved that year to Spokane and eventually to Las Vegas. That's #2. The third try was a AAA club formed in 1978, first as a Phillies farm and then as a Minnesota affiliate. It left for Salt Lake City in 1993. That's #3. Mind you, this doesn't count the small fry like the Single-A Portland Mavericks (1973-77) or the Single-A Rockies (1995-2000). So now the latest dead Beaver is #4. Sic transit gloria castori.

Away in the Hollow Ships

On the final rest day of this year's Tour de France, a moment's reflection on the 97th running of perhaps the world's best known bicycle race.

1. This year's Tour seems to be more of a grinding endurance test than ever. The cobblestones didn't help. The weather didn't help. The crashes didn't help. After 16 days of racing there are five riders within eight minutes of each other, but many of the pre-race favorites; Armstrong, Cadel Evans, Ivan Basso, are far down and many minutes out of contention.2. I think we can stop wondering whether if Contador is a one- or two-year wonder, or a great champion in the Hinault and Indurain mold. If he can win this year, and not be brought low by injury or drug use I think he has established himself as a potential successor to the greats of the sport.

That said, I can't help but think less of the man for his attack on the summit of the Port de Balès. If sport is about anything it must be about the measure of the sportsman or sportswoman. The play should be fair; that's why cheating, whether it's doping or foul tackling or buying umpires is so poorly thought of. If sport is to matter anything, it is about testing one person against another to see who can go faster, higher, stronger, further. Regardless of the course of events that day, Contador lost his chance to prove that he would have beaten Schleck fairly. That isn't his job; his job is to win the Tour. But my job as a fan of the sport is to choose who I believe best honors the sport.3. I have talked a lot about this before, and there really is no point in rehashing it. The Armstrong Era of the Tour is over, and in a spectacular fashion; "Your father was no merciful man in the horror of battle.
Therefore your people are grieving for you all through their city,
Hektor, and you left for your parents mourning and sorrow
beyond words, but for me passing all others is left the bitterness
and the pain..."

4. I find that perhaps the saddest part of the Fall of Hektor is that his Patroclus, Levi Leipheimer, inherited a team in disarray. Johann Bruyneel's name has been mentioned when the great organizers and coaches in the sport are mentioned. But this year has to make one wonder; was Bruyneel a great tactician or merely the trained bear for great riders, Armstrong and Contador? He seemed unable, once Armstrong fell, to find a way to get his backup GC contender, Leipheimer, into position to threaten the podium in Paris. Leipheimer seems destined to find a place in the Hall of Near-Fame, a position in the pantheon of the Demi-Gods of Cycling.5. And, again, this year is a tale of woe for Cadel Evans. The Australian rider had suffered from atrocious team support in last year's Tour, finishing 29th, after three years where Silence-Lotto provided barely enough enough help to get him on or near the podium. But the truth is that the man had to do most of the hard work himself. His new BMC Team has done no better for him than Lotto did. But, let's face it, the man cracked on the Col de la Madeleine in Stage 9. He has not ridden like a champion this year. But it's sad to see him fall so far, and land so hard...

As always, the Tour is a pretty good reflection of people in general, with all their hopes, and fears, their greatness and the smallness. It is pain, and fear, bravery, and weakness. It is a great spectacle, and the battle promised for the Tourmalet tomorrow should not be the least of its enticements.

Update 7/21: It is beginning to look very like another Tour victory for the man from Pinto; he paced his rival Andy Schleck all the way up the Col de Tourmalet. I think that Schleck's chance was to drop the Spaniard on the big climb today by a minute or more - he couldn't. And barring disaster I suspect this means a third climb to the top of the podium for Alberto Contador.So as always...Vive' Le Tour!

Cup runneth over...

It's that quadrennial outburst of national fervor, commercial excess, poor taste, tedious, pedestrian business mixed with the emotional explosions and nearly unmatchable excitement of professionals at the top of their game doing what they do best on the largest stage on the planet.

No!

C'mon, do you take me for a fool?

Of course it's not another damn U.S. federal election!

Who the hell would mistake those idiots for "top professionals"? Professional beggars and prevaricators, perhaps. Top of their fundraising game, maybe. But worth getting emotional about? Puhleese!Nope. It's World Cup time again.

It's always hard for me to blog about the Cup because it's just so vast, the multifarious tales and intrigues and lies and commonplaces and idiocies - did the Spanish goalkeeper get distracted by his hot squeeze broadcasting on the sidelines!? Ohimigawd!!! - makes trying to tease a single thread or two loose to mull over is like delaminating your skis while you're skiing on them. You can do it, but the effort and risk exhausts you by the time you're finished.So.

Let's just read some givens into the record, OK?

Lots of the games will be as dreary as any other professional sporting event, or much of your and my lives in general, in fact. Is every every workday a treat? Every weekend a funfest? Do you see the stars and the Sun whenever you make love?

The hucksterism will be appalling and incessant. I would remark that that is a feature, not a bug, of our Industrial lives, too. Try it - reach out, right now, as you read this. Can you touch something with a corporate logo on it? I'll bet you can.Our very lives are a marketing study. Why should we expect the World's Game to be any different?

Sigh.

Okay, what else.

There will be pretty women in skimpy outfits with national symbols on them. There will be obese men with similar apparel and larger breasts.

There will be a lot of snide, or offensive, or offended, comments about the breasts.

The breasts will not care, particularly, one way or the other.

There will a hurricane of bloviating about the entire business, and the entire world will seem to be caught up in talking about the games, talking about what others said about the games, or talking about something that happened at the games that had nothing to do with sport or soccer at all - Did you hear that Maradona called Platini a French bee-yotch and Pele' an ancient nobody? Ohmifuckinggawd!!!!

Speaking of breasts, the Brazilian women will, as always, manage to look completely covered while somehow deliciously bare, all the while sporting their national team colors.

Hmmm...

Someone or two will fail, or blunder, spectacularly, and will be very publicly pilloried for it, reviled in a way reserved for ex-wives and homicidal dictators, their repentance and abasement demanded, their blood cried for...only to be forgotten by the time the groundsmen finish clearing off the pitch after the final match.

Everyone but the fans of one country will go home disappointed.

It will be utterly ridiculous, and excessive, and foolish. And we who love it will love it again, for all that we're old enough and wise enough to know better.

Oh, yes.

There will be silly mascots.But in order to feel that I'm earning my blogging keep, a bit of business.

One story I would like to tease out is the rich World Cup tradition of Bitching About The Official Ball.

Adidas, the German sports supplier, has provided an "official" ball as backed by FIFA for the World Cup (to go with the official soft drink, the official post-it note, the official t-shirts and drinking glasses, the goddamn official feminine hygiene products, so far as I know. We talked about the merchandising, remember..?) for 40 years. Every four years, for as long as I can remember, some of the players and the fans bitch, moan and whine about the ball. It flies too far, too fast, it wobbles in the air, it's a nightmare for the goalkeepers, it will produce a bucketful of soft goals.

And the first round of group games usually does, and since Alexi Lalas can't even pronounce "post hoc ergo propter hoc" this year's "Jabulani" ballis being blamed for everything from teen pregnancy to the blowout of Deepwater Horizon.

So far as I can tell the soft goals have been mostly the result of nerves, inexperience with teams and pitches, as well as with the ball. I don't think the new ball has been the cause. But I will say this;

I think this thing must take off like it has a rocket up its ass.

I've never seen so many rising shots, long crosses, and misses over the crossbar. The ball has some sort of textured or grooved surface that the maker says are supposed to make it stable in flight.

Weeellll...I don't know. The Wiki entry for it has a slew of quotes from players who hate it. And my observations do suggest that the ball tends to sail or rise more than the previous versions. Is that a problem. Depends, I imagine. I personally like the Real Madrid and Spain defender Álvaro Arbeloa's attitude to the whole controversy.

"It's round," he says, "like always."For all the publicized moaning about the low scores, the group games have had their delights; unlikely victors - Switzerland over Spain! Like having your seductive auntie leave your dashing uncle for the little brown man who sells loafers at the Payless Shoe Store - and shocked favorites, unhoped for wins and pathetic losses. Heroes, villains, wise men, fools...It's the World Cup, the Big Show, and I'll be there tomorrow at 4:30 a.m., enjoying every blowsy, merchandised, oversold moment.

U.S. 3 - 2 Slovenia

Bad, bad call.Should be reversed by FIFA, as I've discussed. Not to excuse the mistakes that got the U.S. men's team 2-nil down at the half. But this is really inexplicable. If it was supposed to be an offsides, it was just wrong. If it was some sort of push or other contact, well, you couldn't really call it on one side without the other - both teams were fighting for position.

Three games today, two stunning and featuring some very...unusual...refereeing. In the Germany-Serbia match from what I could see much of the Spanish referee's work was within the letter of the Laws of the Game, but not what you typically see in international soccer. The Germans were very slow to accept that he was showing yellow for what would have been ordinary fouls to a different official and paid the price for it.The third, England's goalless draw with Algeria, was just dire.More tonight.