Goodbye, Shea Stadium ...

Some folks like to get away,
Take a holiday from the neighborhood.
Hop a flight to Miami Beach or to Hollywood,
But I'm takin’ a Greyhound on the Hudson River Line.
I'm in a New York state of mind.

And so the lyrics of Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind" met my ears moments after the game between the New York Mets and the Seattle Mariners ended on Monday, July 23, 2008. As the song continued to play, I took a few moments to take in Shea Stadium and reflect on memories of trips to New York to see the Mets. This would, barring some dramatic surprise between now and October, be my last game seeing the Mets in Shea Stadium. The Mets are moving into Citi Field in 2009 and, at some point in the near future, Shea Stadium will be torn down.

I have written on this site about some of the changes through which my fan interests in sports franchises have changed throughout the years, particularly with my move to Arizona in the late 1990s. Still, I think, even when the Arizona Diamondbacks became my favorite team for awhile, I have remained, at least in part, a Mets fan since I developed an attachment to the team alongside my growing attachment to baseball in the early to mid-1980s. As I became a baseball fan in the early 1980s, I bounced around a bit: a couple years as a Los Angeles Dodger fan (in line with my uncle, who has been a Dodger fan since their days in Brooklyn), a year or so as a Milwaukee Brewers fan (mainly since my family took yearly trips to visit family in Milwaukee and always went to a Brewers game while we were in town), about a year and a half or two years as a Baltimore Orioles fan (again, because of family trips, this time after we visited my mother’s brother and sister in Baltimore and went to some games). Some of my grade school classmates saw me as a bandwagon fan, since I always seemed to be changing my loyalties to teams when they were having high levels of success (the Dodgers in 1981, the Brewers in 1982, the Orioles in 1983). I suppose the success these teams had at the time played a role, but it was, at least in part, coincidental. I happened to be making other personal connections at the same times as the teams met with their successes. Still, about 1984 or 1985, I hooked onto the Mets. Again, it corresponded with success, as the Mets moved from perennial cellar dwellers to division title contenders at the time; however, it was largely because I finally decided that I valued having a connection to my dad’s team. He had been a Mets fan since growing up in New York in the 1960s, after initially being a Brooklyn Dodger fan before they moved to Los Angeles when he was 7 seven years old following the 1957 season. I latched onto the Mets and they remained unchallenged as my team until the late 1990s/early 2000s, when I attached myself to the Diamondbacks.

So, when I found out that this would be the last season in Shea Stadium, I told my dad that we had to go. This past Monday was the day, as my dad, my mom, my wife, and I all went to the game. We stayed in Manhattan Sunday night, took in some sights in Manhattan Sunday night, went to Central Park during the day on Monday, and took the 7 Train to Flushing a few hours before the game. We saw the new stadium being built on our way in, we ate overly priced ballpark food, and we even ran into a family from, of all places, the Phoenix area, decked in Diamondbacks gear while in the midst of an East Coast family baseball trip that had taken them to Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Yankee Stadium and would take them on to see the Diamondbacks play in Boston.

We saw an exciting game. Monica (my wife) later said that she really enjoyed it and that she may have “caught the fever” of baseball at this game. I don’t think we’re alone in our assessment of the game. ESPN contributor Rob Neyer has expressed similar sentiments about the game. Johan Santana pitched well for the Mets, except for the second inning, when, after an error by third baseman David Wright allowed the inning to continue, Santana gave up four unearned runs on a grand slam home run with two outs to, of all people, Mariner pitcher Felix Hernandez. It was the first grand slam by an American League pitcher since 1971. For Hernandez’s part, he pitched an even better game, no-hitting the Mets for the first few innings, but he didn’t get the win. With two outs in the bottom of the fifth and two strikes on Ramon Castro, Carlos Beltran scampered for home plate from third on a wild pitch. Beltran scored, but in the process, ran into Hernandez’s ankle and Hernandez was unable to continue to pitch. Mariners relievers finished out the inning with only Beltran’s run scoring and held the Mets to that one lone run until the bottom of the ninth, when the Mets scored one run and had the tying run at the plate when Arthur Rhodes struck out Damion Easley to end the game.

In the end, I thought the game was emblematic of so much of being a Mets fan and following the Mets at Shea Stadium. The Mets can be incredibly exciting and they have had moments of, to borrow a word from their history, amazin’ success. I still smile as widely as I can when I watch the baseball go through Bill Buckner’s legs in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series (which, by the way, my parents attended at Shea Stadium) or Jesse Orosco throwing his glove in the air as the Mets won Game 7 that year to win the World Series against the Boston Red Sox. Robin Ventura’s grand slam, which turned into a single because he only made it to first base before getting mobbed by teammates, to win a game against the Atlanta Braves in the 1999 National League Championship Series ranks up there, too. I’m sure for older fans Ron Swoboda’s famous catch in the 1969 World Series and the last out of that series rank up there, too.

Meanwhile, though, the Mets could be incredibly bad. Their 40-120 record from their inaugural season in 1962 remains a modern record for losses. Just last season, they suffered the biggest collapse to miss the playoffs in major league history. In 1993, with one of the biggest payrolls in baseball, they finished with the worst record in the majors, even below expansion teams in Florida and Colorado. To this day, after more then 46 full seasons, they have yet to have a pitcher hurl a no-hitter. Perhaps some folks would lose interest in the team or, at the very least, be embarrassed by such things, but I’ve contended for awhile that part of the mark of a Mets fan is one’s attitude toward how bad the team could be. I take it as a point of pride that my team can be so damn crappy. In 2003, when the Detroit Tigers threatened to lose more than 120 games, I rooted for the Tigers to win as they ended the season with five victories in their last six games to finish at 119. In 2007, with my allegiance at a crossroads, as I felt myself drifting away from the Diamondbacks and back toward the Mets after my 2005 move back east from Arizona, I could have decided to give up on the Mets when they blew their lead over the Phillies and to stick to the Diamondbacks, who went to the National League Championship series. Instead, the Mets’ collapse only endeared the team to me even more.

My last game at Shea Stadium seems to fit with these associations that I have with being a Mets fan, including the hopefulness of the ninth inning that didn’t come to fruition; the craziness of the Mets ace, Johan Santana, giving up a grand slam on his first pitch to a pitcher who had not even swung a bat in a major league game in over a year; and the even more crazy moment of that pitcher, Felix Hernandez, who had pitched so well, leaving the game with an injury one strike from earning a victory.

Despite the fact that I momentarily considered denouncing the Mets and yelling at the asshole fans in the stadium who cheered when they realized Hernandez had been hurt, I’m quite happy to be a Mets fan and it sounds like Monica is starting to feel that as well. Her enjoyment of the game and new appreciation for baseball came despite the fact that the star pitcher of her fantasy league team is Santana, who gave up the grand slam and suffered the loss in the game.

Writing for MLB.com, Marty Noble began his article on the game, with particular reference to Felix Hernandez’s grand slam, as follows: “The plan sometimes is flawed. Other times, the execution is lacking. Instances exist, though, when the plan is well-conceived, its execution is proper and the results are quite acceptable. Then there are those instances when the implausible joins hands with the absurd, and they make a moment that convinces any skeptic that someone other than Commissioner Bud Selig is running the game.”

Noble’s characterization seems very close to another couple of lines from Billy Joel’s song—a couple of lines that also seem to fit my feelings as I say goodbye to Shea Stadium:

I don't have any reasons;
I left them all behind.
I'm in a New York state of mind.

A Response to Gregg Doyel

On April 22, 2008, CBS Sportline ran a pair of columns that discussed Danica Patrick’s first Indy Racing League Victory. As is too often the case with media representations of difference of opinion (see CNN’s now-defunct Crossfire, ESPN’s “Fact or Fiction” segments, etc.), only two opinions were offered and these opinions were offered in very black-or-white fashion, with each side asserting the correctness of its point of view as unqualified truth and no recognition of the nuances of perspective that could exist. In this case, the two positions were, basically: (1) Patrick’s victory was an important step for women and was reason to celebrate and (2) Patrick’s victory should not be considered a significant step for women and was not a reason to celebrate. Mike Freeman took the first position and Gregg Doyel took the second position.

Some of my thoughts on Patrick’s victory have been expressed on this website and it’s a topic in which I’m interested, so I read both columns while eating lunch one day just after the columns were posted. While I disagreed with Gregg Doyel’s overall assessment of Patrick’s victory and how starkly he claimed its insignificance, I thought that Doyel had some important points to consider and I chalked some of the difficulty I had with his overall opinion up to the limitations of the format of the debate, which, as I mentioned above, I find rather flawed to begin with. Recognizing that, I likely would have reflected on the article, but I wouldn’t have responded too strongly in protest to the article. However, I was troubled by Doyel’s use of the term “sexism.” Sexism (like racism, classism, ableism, and other forms of discrimination on the basis of identity like these) is a system that perpetuates oppression of a certain group of people right down to the very structure of society. It’s not simply a matter of characterizing some things or individuals as sexist or racist and others as not based on how they represent gender and race. Rather, one has to recognize that representations, practices, and life itself within a culture or society have inequities based on these identities built into them. I tend to become particularly frustrated when I see terms like “sexist” and “racist” thrown out in ways that clearly don’t account for their structural basis. For instance, when people claim things like “Spike Lee is racist” because of statements he makes about white culture or depictions of race in his films, I typically want to find these people and lecture them on what racism is. They can still disagree with Lee’s statements or representations or find them limiting or perhaps even stereotyped if they wish, but that’s different than racism. So, when I felt that Doyel used sexism in an overly offhanded way in this column to discuss the significance of Patrick’s victory, I felt my surge of protest.

In response, I clicked on the link to “Tell Gregg your opinion!” and submitted a comment, along with my name and email address. In my comment, I said, “I'd like to invite you to attend my gender and communication class the next time I teach it. You need to learn what the term ‘sexism’ means before you go throwing it around recklessly and inaccurately, as you have in the Danica Patrick column.” On April 24, Doyel responded by posting my comment along with his response along with other comment/response pairs under the title “Hate Mail: Back from break and feelin' buff with Buffy.” His public response to my comment: “I'll let you lecture me on sexism if you'll let me lecture you on how to leave the sweater-vested cocoon of academia and compete with real people at a real job in the real world.”

On one level, I want to take Doyel’s comment personally and argue back from the position of offense with which I personally take his statement. First of all, I hate sweaters and have almost never worn one. Secondly, I have done very well in jobs in business and industry and honestly could quite readily have had a good (and, actually, probably less stressful, while also more lucrative) career outside academia. I think I’ve shown full well that I can “compete with real people at a real job in the real world” and I take severe issue with the implication that my choice to teach and conduct academic research somehow lacks legitimacy. However, Doyel doesn’t even know me and so, while I think there is a personal level to his comments, to a large extent I don’t think they are meant to be personal.

That, then, takes me to a second level at which I want to respond to Doyel’s comment—the broader discourses that it reflects and implies. By lecturing me on why I should “leave” academia, particularly since he knows nothing personal about me or the things that I specifically do in my career, Doyel has basically suggested that all careers in academia and, thus, academia itself lack legitimacy. So, then, are we to get rid of colleges and universities? Are we to say education ends at high school and formalized training beyond that is useless? Should we never again voice concern about graduation rates or academic performances of college athletes, since the people teaching them shouldn’t even be there in the first place? These are the kinds of questions that the stark generality of Doyel’s comment implies. I suppose they might be legitimately asked, but only if we’re prepared to undergo serious examination and reconstruction of our educational systems in this country in order to improve those systems.

Additionally, hasn’t Doyel’s comment already basically left academics in a Catch-22 that gives Doyel reason to make fun of them no matter what they do? On the one hand, if an academic tries to engage the “real world” more fully (say, by contributing to message boards or emailing a columnist on a website), a reaction like Doyel’s dismisses the academic’s point of view simply because the person is an academic. So, the academic’s perspectives and insights are, by virtue of simply coming from an academic, immediately rejected. The academic, then, is not allowed to contribute the “real world,” leaving her or him only the academic world within which to work. At this point, then, that academic world can be mocked for being out of touch and disengaged from the real world. The academic is thus dismissed no matter what he or she does and is left no path to legitimacy. Of course, he or she could, as Doyel’s lecture would explain, leave academia. But, then, that solves nothing in terms of connecting academia and “the real world”; it simply moves one more person from one camp to the other. This, then, takes us back to the questions about the general legitimacy of academia, which, again, means being prepared for some serious work to make the system better.

All of these things are surely implied by Doyel’s statement, though, like taking his comment personally, I doubt Doyel meant such a thorough indictment of academia. Maybe he did mean that, but, in that case, is he prepared to address in an adequate manner the questions and decisions that correspond with that indictment? Additionally, is he ready, as part of that, to defend and explain his own connections to academic settings, including his own college attendance as well as the significant degree to which his own career, when he has written on sports like college football and college basketball, has depended on academic institutions? I don’t think Doyel meant the comment (at least primarily) along those lines. Rather, I think Doyel is working most explicitly on a third level—the same kind of editorializing that I have already railed against on this blog. Doyel’s “Hate mail” columns are full of these kinds of insulting responses to readers’ comments. Additionally, many of his editorial pieces are full of similar kinds of sarcastic, insulting, and dismissing comments, aimed at his subjects. In the end, I don’t have to illustrate how Doyel ends up coming across as a Class-A asshole in the columns; just read readers’ responses on discussion boards to some of Doyel’s columns and you’ll see that plenty of readers recognize this. It appears that that “asshole” persona is the persona that Doyel seeks to project. It’s similar to the kinds of personas that others, like Jim Rome in sports talk and like Bill O’Reilly in news talk, work to maintain and use as the basis for their shows. It’s bound in the cult of personality and thrives off being controversial, shocking, and overly dramatic for the sake of controversy, shock, and drama. And, while it can be done effectively to convey some social commentary, rarely does that happen (perhaps Don Imus 35 years ago, but not recently, achieved some of this; John Stewart and Stephen Colbert might be contemporary embodiments of it being done well) and, instead, it ends up coming across as mean, inconsiderate, and, downright ignorant. When the likes of Jim Rome encourage others to call in with their takes, it then takes on even greater significance, since it becomes about more than simply this individual. At that point, this kind of inconsiderate banter is being promoted as the way that meaningful dialogue should occur. I think that Doyel does the same kind of thing with his “Hate Mail” columns. They encourage strong reaction in the forms of mean, sarcastic comments from readers and then reinforce that by Doyel himself adding his own similarly styled responses to the respondents. I’m sure that CBS Sportsline encourages Doyel to maintain this persona, like media outlets did with Don Imus until he said something that made them scared for their pocketbooks, and like tons of other media institutions do when they encourage outrageous behavior and then fire individuals for being too outrageous.

So, in the end, I hold CBS Sportsline at least as responsible for what’s encouraged by Doyel’s columns as I do Doyel himself. And perhaps this will translate into not reading their site any longer. My fantasy baseball league is run through CBS Sportsline and we have been considering moving it to another site for other reasons; perhaps this helps put me over the top to support using some other website. The thing is, though, most other media outlets have and encourage these same kinds of practices and personalities. So, what then is left for me to do?

In answer to that question, I come back to continuing to press on in articulating my positions. Had I realized that Doyel would put my comment and his response out publicly like this, perhaps I would not have written it. In hindsight, though, I’m glad I did. The process of reflection on what’s happened has, I think, helped me learn even more about my own contributions to discourses and about how to continue to work toward building the kinds of public forums of discussion that I want. To quote the kids from South Park, “I learned something today.” So, I suppose, Gregg, you got your wish. While you didn’t technically “lecture” me, I’ve learned something by having to reflect upon your comment. Now it’s your turn: Unlike the title of your column, my comment to you was not “hate” mail. There was a spirit of frustration, disgust, and protest in what I sent, but by no means was it “hate.” The invitation was meant in earnest and in a spirit of working together. Indeed, I think you are a reasonably smart person, but I wish you’d use that more effectively and appropriately. You want to write in a sarcastic style? Go right ahead, but do a better job of making it more intelligent and less dismissive. Relying on tired old stereotypes of academics as out of touch just makes you look much stupider than I think you are. Seek to develop more nuanced, more insightful, and more thoughtful comments that show you’re using the intelligence that you have and that don’t make you out to be some witless asshole who is just out to insult everyone. Be more self-reflexive about the subjectivity of your positions—i.e., acknowledge the limitations of your own comments and opinions, as well as the growth that you and your positions go through when you reflect on what others have to say. You can do that and still be witty and sarcastic. Push yourself to be more effective at this. I can tell you that at least one person (i.e., me) will notice.

Because of commitments to teaching other courses, I won’t be teaching the Gender and Communication course this fall; however, perhaps my comments above can stand in place of that as my “lecture.” In the meantime, for the next time I teach that course, the invitation, in all earnestness, stands. You would be welcome to join our discussion (since, while there are moments when I “lecture” to explain a concept, theory, or idea, for the most part I run that class as in-class discussion). Indeed, having you in for a class or two sure seems like it would allow you to help achieve your goal of making sure I’m connected to the “real world.”

Remember Charlie

Much will be made of the passing of Tim Russert today, but I heard Mike Tirico mention this during coverage of the men's U.S. Open golf tournament today and I wanted to post a special acknowledgement of the passing of sportscaster Charlie Jones, who died Thursday of a heart attack.

I remember Charlie most as a play-by-play announcer for NFL football games on NBC. My memories of him are from the 1980s and 1990s, though he called football for NBC in the 1960s and 1970s as well. In addition to football, Charlie called some other sports for NBC at times, including the Olympics and Wimbledon. Like many sportscasters, Charlie made a few cameo appearances in films and on television programs throughout his career. Interestingly, accordingly to the Internet Movie Database, his last of these cameos was on The L Word.

Charlie had a distinctive, deep voice--distinctive enough that I'm sure many who don't recognize his name would at least remember his voice if they heard it. His announcing partners thoroughout his career on The NFL on NBC included the likes of Todd Christensen, Bob Trumpy, Randy Cross, Merlin Olsen, Bob Griese, and Len Dawson, among a number of others.

A Stark Contrast

Wednesday, while looking up something to read while eating lunch, I clicked on an article that senior writer Jayson Stark wrote for ESPN.com. The article, which focuses on possible reasons for historically low road records in major league baseball this season, can be found here.

While the majority of article and its topic of focus were interesting and seemingly innocuous enough to get me through part of my lunch, I was taken aback by the first two lines of the article: “Some things in life don't make a whole lot of sense. And by that, we don't mean just the ongoing fame and fortune of Whoopi Goldberg.”

Apparently, we now know what Jayson Stark thinks of Whoopi Goldberg, but what the heck his opinion of Goldberg had to do with the topic of the article is beyond me. Additionally, Stark makes this statement as if it is a given that everyone agrees with his assessment, which implies that Goldberg has little talent and does not deserve her popularity and success.

Frankly, I disagree with Stark’s unstated premise. I like Whoopi Goldberg. I don’t often get a chance to hear what Goldberg has to say on The View, on her radio show, on in other forums, but, generally, when I have heard her discuss topics or even use them as the basis for comedy routines, I am often exposed to interesting, enlightening perspectives that contribute usefully to my understandings of things in ways that many other perspectives—or at least many dominant perspectives—are lacking. I also have enjoyed many of her acting performances—probably most notably in The Color Purple—and I have enjoyed the times when she has hosted the Oscars. One of my most lasting memories of the Oscars was one year in the mid-1990s (either 1994 or 1996) when she ended the telecast with a statement encouraging young folks at home to believe that they could reach their dreams.

The instance that impressed me most involving Whoopi Goldberg, though, was an exchange with conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity in June 2006, when she was a guest on Hannity & Colmes, which I happened to catch while flipping through channels while it aired. I don’t have a video link for the exchange, but a written transcript of it can be found here. In this exchange, it was clear that Goldberg and Hannity disagreed on many of the things that they discussed, but the discussion was not the standard fare of American talk media in general or Hannity’s show in particular. Rather, the two spoke respectfully and civilly to one another throughout the interview—something that I attributed largely to Goldberg responding to Hannity in a tone that conveyed mutual respect and understanding amid disagreement, an approach that was able to convey a willingness to understand where one’s fellow discussant is coming from, while also effectively and sensitively asserting one’s own perspective in a way that one’s fellow discussant might consider it. Indeed, this was perhaps one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of what Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin have called “invitational rhetoric.” I’m not alone in my assessment of this exchange, as this link illustrates.

So, given all of this, I have to wonder about the appropriateness of Stark’s comment on Goldberg. It seems like Stark was just trying to be amusing in opening his article by making some blanket statement about a popular culture phenomenon. It’s the kind of thing that a lot of editorialists seem to do. It’s even, seemingly, a trend within some styles of editorial writing that appear to try to emulate the kind of sarcastic writing (a.k.a. Gonzo journalism) popularized by the likes of Hunter S. Thompson. However, while Thompson’s sarcastic use of such references often could convey, like Whoopi Goldberg, some enlightening, useful perspective, many of the emulators just come across as mean, inconsiderate, and, frankly, ignorant. CBS Sportsline writer Gregg Doyel would seem to be an exemplary embodiment of this kind of bad emulation (and, by the way, more to come on Doyel soon, particularly since I’ve recently discovered that he very publicly used this style to respond to a comment on one of his articles that I sent him via the Internet this spring). Stark seems to be utilizing an element of this style to open his article, but, in the end, it ended up being dismissive in a way that was insensitive, inaccurate, and, seemingly, inappropriate; it ended up making the article not so innocuous; and it ended up making at least this reader wonder about what Stark stands for and about the kind of discourse upon which Stark would have information, discussion, and, ultimately, society built.

Rest in Peace, Mocha

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star, like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are, how fragile we are

- Sting

I didn’t know Mocha the cat, but I’ve been finding myself profoundly affected by her death. I’m sure this is in part because my psyche is still reverberating with the aftershocks of my mother-in-law passing away. I’m also sure this is representative of the kinds of deep emotional connections that I feel toward animals—the kinds of connections that have been represented at various times on this blog. Yet, I also don’t want to dismiss these feelings.

On Friday morning, while my wife and I were walking through town for exercise, we noticed a dead cat in the middle of one of the city’s neighborhood streets. Immediately, we voiced a sense of sorrow over the cat’s death. Then, we noticed that the cat had a collar and a tag. Monica suggested that we look to see if we could find information to contact the cat’s owners, particularly because, while the cat had died, presumably by being hit by a car on the road, her body had not been mangled by whatever had happened and we wanted the owners to have a chance to take the cat’s body before cars ran over it and inflicted more damage. The cat’s tag revealed her name—“Mocha”—along with an address and phone number. After a couple of calls with no answer, we realized that the address was for the house directly across the street from where Mocha lay. Fortunately, someone was home and we were able to inform the woman who answered the door of the news about Mocha. The woman subsequently came out to get Mocha.

Mocha looked like a nice cat. She had been dressed in a pretty collar with a heart-shaped nametag attached to it. She looked well-groomed and, I’d like to think, well-loved. I can picture her sitting on her porch licking her paws or enjoying the breeze in the shade of the trees. I can also picture her family saddened by the loss of their pet so unexpectedly and suddenly. These impressions of Mocha are, of course, my own idealistic images of Mocha’s life and home. Her life and home could have been very different and her death could have happened differently than I envision it. It’s possible that, inflicted with some disease, Mocha simply fell over dead and happened to be in the road when it happened. It’s also possible that her family didn’t grieve much over her loss, though Mocha’s collar, tag, and grooming, as well as the woman’s reaction at the door, lead me to suspect otherwise. In the end, I don’t know the details of Mocha’s life and death, but I’m willing to allow my fantasies to exist as my understanding of Mocha … and I want to think of Mocha often, reminding me, even if through my own illusions about her existence, of the joy and pleasure that can be experienced by cultivating time with animals, of how fragile all life is, and of the way that continual recognition of that fragility can help one treat one’s world and one’s fellow inhabitants in that world more sensitively and more compassionately.

(Dis)Parity in the NBA

Tonight, the NBA Finals will begin, as the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers square off in a best-of-seven series to decide who will win the league title. As many have noted, these are the NBA’s two most storied and championship-laden teams, with the Lakers (between Minneapolis and Los Angeles) having won 14 titles and the Celtics (all in Boston) having won 16 titles. These are also the two teams that are considered to have been the leaders in ushering in a new era for the NBA beginning in 1980, with the emergence of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, fresh off their match-up in the NCAA men’s basketball championship game in 1979, in which Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans defeated Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores. In the NBA, Johnson’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics would win 8 of 9 NBA championships from 1980-1988, including squaring off against one another 3 times to decide the championship during that span.

Since 1988, the Lakers have won an additional 3 championships (2000-2002), while the Celtics are making their first appearance in the NBA Finals since losing to the Lakers in 1987. Given this history, this year’s match-up has been characterized, among other things, as “a classic series.” I think the match-up is also indicative of a parity problem in the NBA.

If we take 1980 as the marker in NBA history that it is purported to be, there have been 28 champions crowned in the time since that season. In a week or so, either the Lakers or Celtics will be number 29. Over the span of 28 seasons from 1980-2007, the number of NBA franchises that have won championships is 8. Those franchises are:

Los Angeles Lakers – 8 championships (1980, 1982, 1985, 1987, 1988, 2000, 2001, 2002)
Boston Celtics – 3 championships (1981, 1984, 1986)
Philadelphia 76ers – 1 championship (1983)
Detroit Pistons – 3 championships (1989, 1990, 2004)
Chicago Bulls – 6 championships (1991, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 1998)
Houston Rockets – 2 championships (1994, 1995)
San Antonio Spurs – 4 championships (1999, 2003, 2005, 2007)
Miami Heat – 1 championship (2006)

The average number of championships for those 8 franchises is 3.5, with the Lakers’ 8 as the high number and the one championship each by the 76ers and the Heat as the low number. Indeed, if we take out the 1 championship each by Philadelphia and Miami, it means that 6 franchises have won 26 of the last 28 NBA championships, with an average of 4.333 championships per franchise. Obviously, either Los Angeles or Boston will win in 2008, so those numbers, in a week or so, will be 8 franchises winning the last 29 championships, with an average of 3.625 championships per franchise, and 6 franchises winning 27 of the last 29 championships, with an average of 4.5 championships per franchise. (It’s also interesting to note that these numbers were guaranteed to be the same by the conference championship round of this year’s playoffs, since the Lakers beat San Antonio to advance to the finals and the Celtics beat Detroit to advance to the finals.)

As a point of comparison, we might look at the other 3 “major sports leagues” that dominate sports coverage in the United States: Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and the National Hockey League. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the championships won in each of the four major sports leagues since 1980 (including 2008 for the NBA, since it’s a foregone conclusion that either Los Angeles or Boston will win):

NBA
Championships: 29
Franchises that have won a championship during that period: 8
Average number of championships per franchise for those franchises that have won in that period: 3.625

NHL
Championships: 28
Franchises that have won a championship during that period: 13
Average number of championships per franchise for those franchises that have won in that period: 2.154

NFL
Championships: 29
Franchises that have won a championship during that period: 14
Average number of championships per franchise for those franchises that have won in that period: 2.071

MLB
Championships: 27
Franchises that have won a championship during that period: 18
Average number of championships per franchise for those franchises that have won in that period: 1.5

These numbers clearly indicate that Major League Baseball has had a lot more parity in terms of winning championships since 1980 than the other three sports and that the NHL and the NFL have had considerably more parity along those lines than the NBA over that time period. Now, this is not to say that this is the only way to measure parity and I would not be surprised to find, for instance, that MLB does far worse than the other three leagues when it comes to number of playoff appearances for franchises over that time period. (That is, of course, at least partially a result of less teams making the playoffs in MLB than in the other three leagues.) We might also look at won-loss records, economic disparities (e.g. salaries, revenues, etc.), and other things and find varied results as well. So, again, I don’t want to say this is the only way to judge parity or that the measurement of parity upon which I have just elaborated is necessarily the best or more appropriate way to judge parity. However, I do think that 8 franchises winning the last 29 championships can’t be ignored. … I mean, come on, even Wimbledon, which is known for long streaks of dominance by the likes of Pete Sampras, Martina Navratilova, and, currently, Roger Federer, has a much better record on parity in terms of diversity of champions than the NBA. Since 1980, 13 different men have won the Wimbledon men’s championship and 12 different women have won the Wimbledon women’s championship.

May 18

Sometimes no news is bad news …

That certainly has been the case for why I haven’t posted anything on this blog in the last couple of weeks.

On Sunday, May 18, my wife and I had plans to remember our dog Turbo. Turbo was a chihuahua/terrier mix who had been with Monica for a number of years before I met her in 1998 and then became our “little guy” after we moved in together and, eventually, got married. He was a feisty dog who tried to bite people whom he did not know, but he was also a dog who could be very lovable and attention-seeking when he got to know you. He had had a rough life before Monica got him. Among other things, a previous owner would kick him down a hall when the owner was angry with him. Monica, though, with her passion and love for dogs, did nothing of the sort and, indeed, was responsible for bringing out more of the tender side of Turbo. For as much as I say Turbo was our dog, he really was Monica’s love.

Turbo was able to live what for a dog is a relatively full and long life. We don’t know exactly how old he was, but we estimated him to be around 15 years old when he passed away on May 18, 2007, of heart failure while undergoing emergency treatment to attempt to correct rapid kidney failure. While Monica and I had some time with Turbo at MedVet pet hospital in Columbus, Ohio, before he died, our last memory of Turbo as a “free” dog came at a rest area on US-23 between Findlay, Ohio, and Upper Sandusky, Ohio, on our way down to Columbus. We stopped to allow Turbo to go to the bathroom and, while he hobbled through the grass with our assistance, he took some time to sniff the air and look around at the green around him. Since French fries were Turbo’s favorite food, Monica and I had planned after Monica got off work on May 18, 2008, to drive down to the rest area and eat some French fries in Turbo’s memory. It seemed like a fitting tribute, but it was a tribute that didn’t happen that day.

About 3:30 in the afternoon, just a few hours before our planned trip to the rest area, I received a call from one of Monica’s aunts telling me that Monica’s mother, Debbie, had suffered a brain aneurysm while driving with her husband back home to the Phoenix area after a trip to Laughlin, Nevada. By the time Monica got home from work a little after 6:00, we were booking a one-way flight for her to Phoenix for that evening. She would get in around 1:15 a.m. that night and we kept clinging to the hope that everything would be okay. We’d even gladly take the option of Monica needing to spend the summer in Arizona to help her mom rehab from the incident.

Those hopes fell short, though, as Monica’s mom passed away the next day—Monday, May 19—at the age of 52—an age that, unlike Turbo’s, is not representative of a full and long life. I already had my flight to Arizona scheduled by the time Debbie passed away and I was in town late Tuesday afternoon. Monica and I got back to Bowling Green, Ohio, on Sunday, June 1, after two surreal weeks of preparing a memorial for her mom, going through her mother’s belongings, and driving home in a moving truck.

I was asked to do the eulogy for Deborah M. Weir at her memorial on Friday, May 23. In my speech, I recalled how at my wedding in 2005, in her toast Debbie spoke of how much togetherness she felt at the event and how good that made her feel. I argued that that sense of togetherness was central to Debbie’s life—that while Debbie was a person who spent much of her life searching for happiness, searching for answers, and searching for fulfillment, she understood at least one secret of life more than most of us: the importance of togetherness. I think that Debbie’s emphasis on togetherness was, as most things seem to be, both a strength and a weakness. It meant that Debbie was always trying to include others as much as she could and that she was very accepting of and giving toward others. It also, though, meant that she often didn’t do enough for herself and that some of the people who were the very closest to her felt cheated of time alone with her because they had to share that time with so many others. Still, I think that that sense of togetherness is something worth remembering, just as Debbie Weir is someone worth remembering and just as Turbo is someone worth remembering. I think of each of them every day and I know that every May 18, I will most certainly remember both Debbie and Turbo as best as I can.