Mark Byron

On the Lefty

I recall reading Hedrick Smith's The Russians back in my undergrad days. One of features his stories of 1970s Soviet life that stuck with me a third of a century later was of their underground economy; working with quid-pro-quo favors, bribes and other things of dubious legality was working na lavo or "on the left."

That came to mind just now as the news story came over the wires this afternoon. It seems that Phil "Lefty" Mickelson was more than somewhat on the left, sending money via a proxy to a offshore gambling site. The proxy was busted by the feds for money laundering. So far, Michelson hasn't been charged himself, since the folks running the illicit gambling ops tend to get busted rather than the clients.

Phil's been known for liking to play high stakes golf matches with fellow pros on the days between tournaments, and his friendship with a different profession gambler/real estate guy was noted last year when Phil was investigated for insider trading; his friend's was connected with corporate raider (hands-on-investor might be a nicer descriptor) Carl Ichan and Phil seemed to be following Ichan's lead before it became public knowledge.

There's some interesting psychology going on here. It reminds me of Michael Jordan's love of gambling, both on non-basketball sports like golf as well as in casinos. He was something of an action junkie, and that might be what's in play here with Mickelson.

Five Smooth Stones, English-Style

I'm not quite sure where this ranks in the realm of upsets, but the BBC seems rightly stunned by soccer power Manchester United being beat 4-0 by third-division Milton Keynes Dons in League Cup play. That's a tournament between the clubs of the top three levels of English soccer, it's not as prestigious as the FA Cup which includes all adult soccer clubs and the Premier League title that goes to their major-league regular season champ.

Still, that has echoes of Virginia-Chaminade and Michigan-Appalachian State (who have a rematch Saturday, albeit with Appy State playing I-A ball this time) where college powerhouses were beat by teams well below their station. There aren't any major sports parallels in the US, since major-league teams wouldn't be playing AA-clubs in a tourney; there aren't even any good parallels outside of baseball, since there aren't pro basketball or football leagues two notches below the NBA or NFL.

This is even weirder since the Dons whupped United. One could understand a 2-1 or 1-0 game, but this would be like ASU taking Michigan down 31-3 or a AA team beating the New York Yankees 13-0.

Manchester United has had an off start to its year so far, getting off to a 0-1-1 start in Premier League play, so something might not be right with the club that I liken to a British version of the Yankees in that they spend like drunken sailors (they just set a record for paying for a player's contract today and that's not out of character) and are rarely far from the top of British soccer.

Interesting times.

 

To an Athlete Dying Young...At His Own Hand

I have the stat page for Terry Trafford up from the Ontario Hockey League web site. Eight goals and 24 assists in 54 games so far this season. That puts him tied for 149th in points (goals and assists combined) in the league. As a center, that's not all that great; tagging him as more of a passer than a scorer. The OHL is one of three major junior-hockey leagues in North America (in a nether-region between pro and amateur; the NCAA treats it as pro, but Canadian colleges treat it as amateur) and is a training ground for older teens (16-20 is the bracket) who need better competition than their local high school or college circuit can provide.

He just turned 20, having his birthday on Valentine's Day, which means he has at most one more year of eligibility for junior hockey. The so-so stats and his age would indicate that he was close to the end of the line of his competitive hockey career, as he was about to age out of junior hockey and seemed to be a iffy choice for an NHL team in the draft this summer. Getting suspended by the Saginaw Spirit last month wasn't going to help matters going forward as future pro teams evaluated Trafford.

I speak of Trafford in the past tense, since his body was found in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Saginaw Tuesday afternoon; one of my New Life Vineyard friends was a manager at that Wal-Mart years ago. The suspension seems to have been the last straw to Trafford's psyche, where he saw his hockey career essentially go up in flames and would have to shift gears to a non-hockey life in the very near future. After the suspension, his girlfriend noted-"He texted me and told me his life was over and that he didn't want to do it anymore."

For a hockey-crazed Canadian kid (sorry for the stereotype, but it might fit well here), hitting the end of the line of his hopes of making it to the NHL might be very depressing. Add that to the fact that he was dealing with depression issues to begin with made him an accident looking to happen, especially when he was being sent "home" to metro Toronto and his girlfriend was a native Saginaw gal who graduated from suburban Heritage High with Trafford.

Trafford was faced with the transition of having dreams of being the next Tim Horton to working at a Tim Hortons; Horton was a defenseman for Trafford's home town Leafs and Trafford was a center, but give me some poetic license. The Canadian economy seems to have weathered the economic stagnancy better than the US, but Trafford was faced with going into the general economy rather than a hockey career, which is a daunting task these days.

In a stagnant economy, middle-aged folks often commit suicide when they're let go from a higher-level job, knowing that they are unlikely to get work on that level again and will be hard-pressed to round down to a lesser job. Trafford might have hit that middle-age crisis at age 20 and couldn't handle it.

I can relate to Trafford's dillema.

I'm still looking for my spot in the economy as one who proved not to have the temperament to be a good college professor and can't find an alternative spot in the economy. Having a wife to lean on and a God to lean on even when He seems very pokey to lend a hand career-wise has kept me from seriously dwelling on packing it in, but not everyone is that blessed, including a statistically-mediocre junior hockey center.

Bammed in Boston

Odd story out of Boston... someone bombed the Boston Marathon earlier this afternoon; two are dead and another score have been hospitalized. The bombing happened a couple of hours after the winners had finished, so it wouldn't have been aimed at having too many East Africans winning the big marathons. At the 4-hour mark of a marathon, you have recreational runners for the most part.

A local crazy, maybe? An anti-patriot messing with the celebration of Patriot's Day? It doesn't smell like a jihadi, but it's likely far too early for armchair profiling.

Not only do you have downtown Boston messed up, you have hundreds of runners and their families who just had what is often the highlight of a running career ruined. Not good; prayers are an order.

Carol of the Rung-Bells

Very good TrueHoop piece on concussions and the NBA. We normally think of head injuries as a football thing, but between hitting the deck hard after a foul and flying elbows under the basket, folks do "get their bell rung" more than in the NBA ad where they did Carol of the Bells with bouncing balls.

We know more about concussions that we did years ago, but that knowledge isn't universal. The piece points out that even team doctors don't have major backgrounds in neurology that would allow them to fully diagnose brain damage from concussions, so training of trainers and doctors is needed.

Also, that "hey, he just got his bell rung" macho attitude needs to be tamped down a notch. When Anthony Davis had to be benched with a concussion, his coach pulled out the putting-them-in-pink-tutus meme to protest the IR time. Basketball is something of a contact sport, even if such contact does draw a foul most of the time; however, treating injuries evolves with out knowledge, and our attitude needs to get out of the Bronze Age as well.

The Good, the Bad and the Sports Page

Here's at least one good thing on the sports page-Greg Oden is heading towards a comeback. He's had little but bad luck since leaving OSU, and Miami seems interested in signin him even if he won't be ready to play until next year. Oden seems to be a neat guy who deserves better than what he's been handed the last half-decade, so it would be nice to see him play at an elite level.

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Another good news item is the NHL getting back in gear for a 60% season; the owners have signed off and the players are slated to vote this weekend.

The lack of hockey on TV has left some interesting holes in a number of networks, especially here in Michigan where the Red Wings are part of the fabric of sports in the cold-weather months. The lastest NHL video game had a homage to the Wings when they showed a maintanance guy taking a octopus off the ice to the commentary of "this is our idea of sushi." Until now, that's the one way to get NHL action on your TV is via a video game console.

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The big headline-maker of the day is Junior Seau testing positive for brain damage; chronic traumatic encephalopathy is the $10 term for the long-term damage that can often be caused by getting your head banged in on a regular basis. Seau did himself last May, and since CTE can cause emotional issues, it was a primary suspect in what might have lead Seau to suicide.

Football and other sports are getting more proactive in dealing with concussions. We have Pau Gasol sitting out for the Lakers at present with a concussion that he likely would have played through not too many years ago. Lion RB Jarvid Best has missed almost two full years with concussion-related issues, where he's healthy but not quite clear-headed enough to pass medical muster.

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Yesterday's headline maker was Cooperstown not getting a new-timer inducted. Both Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds were snubbed by the writers when they should be near-unanimous picks were it not for their better-living-throug-chemestry rep. The all-time homer champ and the winner of the most Cy Youngs should be in, but a majority of the writers hae the no-roiders-allowed sign up. That's going to give the Old Timer's committee some interesting work about 2030 if this keeps up.

Mark McGwire on a par with Fred McGriff? Bonds and Clemens just a notch better than Edgar Martinez? Not quite.

Lowering the Heat

Bob Costas stirred up a hornet's nest last night, citing an anti-gun-culture essay by Jason Whitlock regarding the Javon Belcher shootings of Saturday.

"Our current gun culture," Whitlock wrote, "ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead."

That is true, even if you are card-carrying NRA member.

However, this is more an indictment of modern youth culture than of the Second Amendement. If a sub-culture has a leaning towads violence, giving said folks guns will tend to do more harm than good. Self-defence is quick to turn into offense if you take offense at something.

Can you do violence without guns? Yes, but what's the last drive-by-knifing you heard of?

"Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows?"

"But here," wrote Jason Whitlock," is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today."

I'll buy that. Could he have knifed his girlfriend and himself, or beat his girlfriend to a pulp then drove his car off a bridge? Yes, but both acts are harder to pull off than the simple pull of a trigger. A murder-suicide by knife in Wyoming last week is case in point that such things can happen, but they're far rarer than the lead-poisoning version.

He'd also have a shot to think better of it between swings or stabs than between trigger pulls.

Also, I didn't see any calls for repeal of the Second Amendment in either piece. It may have been assumed in the rhetoric, but one can be against the casual packing of heat and be supportive of folk's right to an armed self-defence.

You also have the right not to bear arms. If you might be temped to use it in anger in something other than self-defence, it would likely be a bad idea to have a gun handy.

I don't know Belcher's back-story. He might well have had a legit need to have a gun on him. However, something tipped him over the edge Saturday, and the edge was easier to go over with a gun handy.

 

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One more twist in the college sports musical chairs, as Louisville joins the ACC, replacing Maryland, who joined with Rutgers to give the numerically-challenged Big Ten 14 teams.

Focusing on the relatively small Louisville TV market might be a mistake; this gives the ACC most of Kentucky, as the ACC becomes a home conference for the whole state. The Cardinals don't have the following of UK statewide, but this will likely make the ACC the first choice over the Big 10 for the ABC regional package, since the SEC is off on CBS.

I'm not sure if I've heard this addressed, but you're moving towards a bifurcated Big East, which combines urban Rust Belt Catholic basketball schools with secular southern football schools recruited from CUSA and elsewhere. Cincinnati and UConn are a decent fit for the Jesuit crew, but the rest are an awkward fit.

If you took what's left of the northern private schools not leaving (Providence, St Johns, Seton Hall, Villanova, Georgetown, DePaul, Marquette, Temple) you'd have a very good basketball conference with being urban faith-based schools as a common denominator.

The remainder would fit better as a football-centric, Southern-based conference; the WAC imploded after over-expanding, with most of the original ganstas moving to the Mountain West. I could see such a split happening in the Big East.

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