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!

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.

"What an idiot."

Back in the day I was a hell of a baseball fan.

I could tell you who platooned at catcher for the 1971 Washington Senators (Paul Casanova and Jim French). I could tell you who Moonlight Graham was before the excrable "Field of Dreams" fantasy made him a household word. I read Bill James and honestly cared who went into the Hall of Fame.

Well, I grew up, sort of, and moved away from baseball, developing a passion for soccer, a love-hate relationship with lacrosse (love the game, hate the "leagues" that play it) and a secret fascination with oddball, nonprofessional sports like curling and roller derby.

But there are moments when baseball rears up and slaps me in the head with why I stopped following the game.

The steroids had something to do with it; I knew...hell, everybody watching the game knew...that Sosa and McGwire didn't get those biceps drinking their Tiger's Milk. The cheap homers and the return of what Bill James called "sit-on-your-ass" baseball, where both teams and the fans sat around and waited to see whose pitcher would hang one in the other teams' slugger's wheelhouse, had something to do with it. The loathsome antics of the owners, a bunch of spoiled rich men who finally discovered that they didn't have to put up with some crotchety Commissioner telling them what they couldn't do by placing their own bobo in the Commissioner's chair, had a LOT to do with it.

But mostly it was stuff like this that killed my affection for the game.

This little bit of nonsense is a perfect illustration of the way I feel about professional baseball as a sport and am beginning to feel about my country as a nation.

Here's a perfectly simple situation; someone makes a mistake. Call it invading a foreign country that presented no threat to us. Call it letting a private company take charge of an environmental disaster of its own making. Call it letting the same charlatans who swindled each other and the public continue their monte games with the full and complete guarantee of the Federal Reserve. Call it blowing a call at first and fucking up a pitcher's perfect game.The solution is obvious; take charge. The "rules" and "traditions" of baseball are not sacred. The "free market" is not a religion. The "respect" and "dignity" of a nation, or a nation's leaders, are not worth a pint of pig piss when compared to human lives and individual rights.

So you, the leader, the "Commissioner", step in, reverse the call, make the official end of the game the out Jason Donald made, end of story.

Imagine if all those OTHER choices were so simple! That the destruction of the north Gulf of Mexico could simply be undone. That the tens of thousands of deaths and billions in damage and destruction could be just revived and reconstructed as if they'd never happened. That the jobs and wealth of all those of us fucked over by the moronic "Master of the Universe" could be redeposited into our IRAs and mortgages and bank accounts.

But this worm, this flyspeck, this insignificant, niddering, wretched simulacrum of a man, this Selig, this sock-puppet for his wealthy cronies, this echoing, empty tube of encrusted toilet tissue says "that Major League Baseball will look at expanded replay and umpiring, but (would not) specifically address umpire Jim Joyce's botched call Wednesday night."

In other words, the "rules", the arbitrary laws that we ourselves set up, are more important to Selig and men like him than taking action outside the "rules" to correct an obvious error and right a wrong done to real people in real places. Better than a real man should be denied than a powerful organization should be seen to be in - or admit to, and correct its - error.

Conformity trumps neccessity. Complacency trumps action. Image trumps reality.

And, yeah, I'm kind of done with that, too.

A vigorous, active, healthy society makes rules that make sense for its daily lives, actively question and live to those rules, and when those rules conflict with good sense, health, and vigor,, temporarily abrogates or even permanently changes those rules. When a society falls to blindly "following the rules", when the form of things matter more than the function, when rules becomre more important than human lives, or reality, or sense?That's a problem. That's a society with no outs, the bases loaded and the game tied, deep in the late innings, with a tired pitcher and a manager who is out of relievers.

I can't help but see this as a snapshot of a game, and a society, that are looking perilously close to walking off the field hung with an "L".