National League Playoffs

Instead of doing a formal playoff preview, I’m going to make a list of reasons I might root for each National League team. There are a few reasons for this, the biggest being that I don’t know as much about the National League as I do about the American League. Also, because I don’t have a rooting interest in the NL, these things will make the NL playoffs more entertaining to watch. Let’s begin!

San Francisco Giants
- They’ve never won a World Series since they moved from New York to San Francisco.
- AT&T Park is one of the most beautiful stadiums around, and the more games shown there on national television the better.
- Tim Lincecum is all kinds of awesome. He’s even entertaining in a Snuggie.

- Pablo Sandoval is fat, jolly, and a really good baseball player. He likes cake. His nickname is Kung Fu Panda. So many reasons!

- Buster Posey isn’t just an incredibly talented rookie catcher, but he also has one of the best names in baseball.
- Brian Wilson (according to his shirt in this clip) is “RAD.”

- The Giants have one of the best uniforms in baseball.
- When they wear jerseys with the Spanish version of their team name, they actually translate the word to “Gigantes” instead of just slapping a “Los” in front of Giants.

Atlanta Braves
- Jason Heyward, y’alls.

- I wouldn’t mind seeing a rematch of the 1996 Braves/Yankees World Series, as long as the Braves win this time.

Philadelphia Phillies
- If you don’t like watching Roy Halladay pitch, either you’re not a baseball fan or he’s pitching against your team.
- Chase Utley is like the National League’s Dustin Pedroia, only with more hair and less moxie.
- Shane Victorino has some awesome nicknames: “The Flyin’ Hawaiian” and “Pineapple Express.”
- If the Phillies win the World Series, someone very close to me gets another World Series ring.

Cincinnati Reds
- The possibility of Arthur Rhodes’s earrings starting a baseball brawl is always fun.
- Bronson Arroyo and his guitar.
- Aroldis Chapman throws faster than Ricky Vaughn.
- I’m not gonna lie. It’s difficult to find any reason to root for the Reds.

Mike Tyson’s Many Personalities

Mike Tyson has always been a man of contradictions. It’s what makes him so interesting. People have always known about his parentless upbringing and the way Cus D’Amato became Tyson’s legal guardian, using boxing as a way to turn Tyson into something, anything, because without boxing, Tyson would have amounted to nothing more than a criminal (which he also would remain throughout his life). His loss to Buster Douglas set off a sequence of events that altered Tyson’s reputation numerous times. His first prison sentence turned him into a “savage animal,” which was later reinforced by his biting off a piece of Holyfield’s ear. Then some cupcake fights and another prison sentence turned him into a punch line. Tyson would no longer be “the baddest man on the planet.”

Tyson has always fascinated me. Even though he had already established his reputation as one of the best boxers in history well before I became aware of athletes or other stars with larger-than-life personalities—I was only four years old when Tyson won the International Boxing Federation, World Boxing Association, and World Boxing Council heavyweight titles—the myth of “Kid Dynamite” persisted long enough to leave a lasting impression on me. Here was a guy who seemed so lost and fragile that, anytime he spoke, I wouldn’t have been been surprised to see the wrong comment send him shattering into a million pieces, yet at the same time was capable of destroying anyone who crossed his path.

In some ways, Tyson’s story is similar to that of a number of rags-to-riches athletes who couldn’t handle their sudden and newfound wealth. Like most superstars, his private life unfolded publicly: America watched as then wife Robin Givens told Barbara Walters that being married to Tyson was “torture, pure hell,” while Tyson sat by silently, lost in what he would probably call “bolivian.” His former Ohio mansion—abandoned after he went bankrupt—became an internet sensation. Photographers and pop culture nerds have made numerous pilgrimages to the home, which serves as a sort of monument to unsustainable riches.

What I find most interesting about Tyson, though, is how he continues to use all the facets of his history to repeatedly reinvent himself. He has made numerous appearances on talk shows, and his cameos, including the recent appearance on The Hangover, are very popular. Most recently, the August issue of Details ran this interview, titled “Everything You Think You Know About Mike Tyson Is Wrong.” It’s a good interview, yes, but it’s also a bit misleading because it doesn’t say anything new about the man. It’s a lot like the Tyson documentary released in 2008, where the audience is told a bunch of things it already knows in an attempt to change how someone feels about him.


Tyson is worth watching, and the interview is worth reading, even though it’s basically pro-Tyson propaganda. I believe his story is one worth telling, if only as a precautionary tale, but also because it’s impossible to know what he’s thinking. At times he seems like the Mike Tyson being abashed by Robin Givens, unaware of his surroundings or even his own presence. Other times he seems hyper-aware and calculating, as if he knows you want him to say his life has been waste. He makes the totally mundane completely absurd (like drinking tea) and the completely absurd absolutely ridiculous (like SNL’s “What Up With That?”). It’s hard to tell if he embraces the contradictions he’s become and presents it to you as entertainment, knowing people are drawn to him the way passersby stare at the scene of a car crash, or if there are some remnants of Kid Dynamite still waiting to explode.

*Top photo courtesy of Bert23 via Creative Commons License
**Photo of Mike Tyson’s mansion courtesy of PenelopeJonze via Creative Commons License. Check out the rest of the photos here.

Explaining My Fandom

This is a topic that comes up pretty frequently among my friends. Fellow There’s No “I” in Blog writer Ian once asked me, “You don’t really have an NFL team, do you?” As recently as this weekend, I had to explain why I like the Colts now that I am living in Boston and am frequently faced with fervent Patriots fans. Also, I recently took a nice West Coast vacation over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, which included a trip to the Rose Garden to see the Blazers take on the 76ers and the Q&A session with the Mariners front office Joe wrote about yesterday. All of this got me thinking about my fairly scattered sports loyalties.

Yes, now that I live in Boston, I have become a Red Sox fan, much to the dismay of some of my family members. As much as I love the Mariners, I love the sports culture here much more than in Seattle, both in the stadium and in the city. Even when the Mariners won 116 games and were selling out the stadium, the place was so quiet you could easily have phone conversations. Sometimes it felt like the people that were there thought they had better things to be doing. That won’t fly in Boston. Fenway is all about the game. On big game days, everyone in Boston is a Sox fan. There’s something electric in the city that I love and that never happened while I was in Seattle. That being said, I’d still root for the Mariners over the Red Sox, and I’m very excited to see former Mariners Mike Cameron (and his kind of sideways hat) and Adrian Beltre (and his right testicle) join the Red Sox in 2010.

Living in Boston has also opened me up to the wonderful world of the NHL. I’ve always liked hockey, and it’s the only sport other than baseball that I get nostalgic about. Unlike baseball, I never played hockey, but like baseball, I watched it on television with my dad. He never seemed to care too much about basketball or football, but he always liked hockey, and I always liked watching it with him, even before we started making fun of the amazing mullets seen on Hockey Night in Canada. Now I own a Byron Bitz t-shirt and a Bruins jersey. I’ve been to a few games this season, and I cheer for Tuukka Rask because he’s good and has a ridiculously badass name. My original hockey allegiance is with the Seattle Thunderbirds of the Western Hockey League. When I eventually move to Portland, OR, I will make it my mission to get Portland and Seattle NHL teams (Portland also has a WHL team, the Winterhawks). Both cities are great sports towns and are way more deserving of an NHL team than places like Phoenix and Nashville. I’m pretty sure Portland and Seattle would draw better attendance than those teams.

I also moved to Boston in time to jump on the Celtics bandwagon for their championship season. I was a Sonics fan (and would be in the future, if that ever happens), but by now we’re all aware of how the NBA allowed Oklahoma City to steal the team and give them a stupid name (seriously, the Thunder?). As a Celtics fan, I love Rondo’s alien-like wingspan, his crazy speed, and his ability to find passing lanes that few others can find. Brian Scalabrine also brings an underrated element into each home game. No matter what the score, anytime Scal comes into a game, the crowd goes wild for his curly redhead afro and cheers like nuts any time he touches the ball. How many players can get a crowd that into a game simply by standing up? Oh yeah, those other “Big Three” guys are pretty good too.

The other NBA team I’m a fan of is the Portland Trailblazers. This comes from living in Oregon for a few years. Portland is the city I want to live in, and the city I will hopefully move to in the (hopefully not so) distant future, so there’s that connection. On top of that, I like Greg Oden’s 55-year-old expressionless face and hope for him to get and stay healthy. I think Joel Przybilla’s nickname (Vanilla Gorilla) is one of the best in sports, and love the prospect of watching LaMarcus Aldridge and Brandon Roy playing together for a long long time.

And finally, I’ll close out this post by going back to those couple of years I lived in Oregon and attended Oregon State University. That’s right, I am a die-hard Beavers fan. I own more orange clothing than any adult probably should. On the rare occasion I see someone in Boston wearing Ducks green and yellow, part of me wants to yell “GO BEAVERS” at them. I’m not sure this needs a lot of explanation. Pretty much everyone I know, sports fans and non-sports fans alike, maintain a deep-seeded loyalty to their alma mater. Plus, if you’ve ever seen this blog, you’ve probably noticed that I like the Oregon State University Beavers.

*Photo of Squatch courtesy of Funktasm via Creative Commons License

Starter: Allen Iverson and His Man Tears

Who is he? He’s Allen Iverson, and if you don’t know who A.I. is, chances are, you’ve stumbled onto the wrong blog. He’s the feisty little dude who was drafted by the 76ers in 1996, where he became the Rookie of the Year, later led the NBA in scoring four times, and laid the groundwork for his 24,098 points (and counting). He’s 34 years old and is listed at 165 pounds, yet still throws his body around as much as he can, which is a ton of fun to watch, even if age has slowed him down a bit. You probably also already know that he recently retired for a day or two before re-signing with the 76ers, where he promptly set free some pent up man tears.

Why we like him? Once again, it’s the man tears (in addition to 20,000+ points and being an amazing athlete). You didn’t think we would let some man tears pass without taking note of it, did you? Sure, this happened a while ago, but Iverson’s retirement and subsequent unretirement told us not to rush anything because A.I. isn’t going away any time soon. These man tears were respectable man tears, not Brett Favre man tears. These are man tears brought out by the same passion that drives one of the smallest guys on the court to impose his will on the game.

In case you haven’t seen it, you can watch a clip of A.I.’s press conference below, but first, I can’t forget to mention his nickname: The Answer. That’s a great nickname. We not only like athletes with great names, but we also like great nicknames too. We’ll have none of that first name initial, last name first syllable garbage like A-Rod, V-Mart, D-Wade. It’s lazy, unimaginative, and says nothing about the player or their game. The Answer, on the other hand, says just about everything you’d expect about A.I.’s game.

*Photo courtesy of thanasim25 via Creative Commons License