The Sports Curmudgeon

Mike Nifong is the District Attorney in Durham, NC who has been “handling” the so-called Duke Lacrosse rape case. I’m sure you know that he’s dropped the rape charges and that the alleged victim has changed her account of what happened that night several times. Nifong faced a proceeding in front of the NC bar for making improperly inflammatory statements about the alleged violators even before minor things such as indictments/hearings had occurred. Now Mr. Nifong faces added ethics charges that could get him disbarred. The new charges say that he had in his possession potentially exculpatory evidence for the defense but did not reveal that information to the defense in a timely manner. That’s not good. What seems to me to be worse is that he supposedly assured the court on several occasions that he had turned over all evidence to the defense that he had in his possession. Since he is an officer of the court, I suspect that if he purposely lied to the court, he took the severity of his offense up a notch or two.

In a topical rant on this case about 9 months ago, I said that we needed to stop giving breathless attention to press statements released by various people including “prosecutors running for election in Durham”. I stand by that statement now and think that we should let the ethics proceedings play themselves out where they should - - in front of the duly constituted tribunal that hears and decides these issues. This is not something where intense journalistic coverage is going to make things better.

One thing I must say in Mr. Nifong’s defense; he did stop short of accusing the three lacrosse players of the murder of Jimmy Hoffa, the disappearance of Judge Crater or harboring the fugitive, D. B. Cooper.

The Australian Open is nearing its conclusion so there’s actually some tennis news that makes it beyond the agate type in your local sports section. I read in USA Today that 383 male entrants in pro tennis tournaments withdrew from tournaments during 2006. Attention tennis mavens: People don’t pay to go see players who withdrew from tournaments and/or matches that are “walk-overs”. And I refuse to believe that there were that many last-minute injuries/illnesses among these professional athletes. Even if you count 60 men’s tournaments in a year, that means more than 6 entrants per tournament had to withdraw. This may be a large part of why men’s tennis has sunk to the level of “irrelevant” on the sporting scene. The folks who run tennis really need to go back and dig up some of the works of the late, great Walt Kelly. Kelly’s protagonist, Pogo Possum, said it all to his friend and colleague, Porkypine:

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Speaking of tennis, the reigning US women’s junior champion is Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. Pity the poor headline writer with only a single column article if she wins a tournament. On the other hand, think of the promotion tennis could run by using her name and asking for people to make anagrams from it; here’s my best entry:

Shake on a savvy alpaca unit

There is a story on ESPN.com about a professional pillow-fighting league. No, that is not a typographical error. The women do not compete in lingerie or anything like that; this is supposed to be real fighting but they have to lead with a pillow before they can punch/kick/whatever. At a recent set of matches in Toronto, the organizers made the distinction between “pillow fighting” and “fighting with pillows”. The sport does borrow one presentational gimmick from pro rasslin; the women involved have “clever” ring names. The current world champion is Champain; contenders for her title include Betty Clocker, Anna Conda and Apillow Creed.

Put Pro Pillow Fighting on TV up against any random early round match in a men’s tennis tournament and I’m not sure which gets higher ratings…

Since I mentioned pro rasslin a minute ago, I think I have an idea for Barry Bonds to pursue once his baseball career is finished. He needs to go on the WWE circuit. With that cranium of his, he could reprise the finishing move of the late Bobo Brazil – the Coco-butt. However, there will be lots of choreography needed here because if Bonds ever actually hit an opponent with that skull of his, the poor guy might be unconscious for ten days.

There is a racetrack in Grand Island Nebraska called Fonner Park. No, I’ve never been there; I’ve never even heard of Fonner Park; I think I know where Grand Island is in Nebraska even though I’m certain there is no ocean or sea anywhere in the vicinity. Anyway, a veterinarian at Fonner Park faces charges that he injected “jittery horses” with vodka to calm them down. Here’s a defense he could offer. Cars run just fine on 10% ethanol so why not horses…?

For those of you who contemplated the possibility that Bob Knight might have mellowed once he passed Dean Smith as the all-time winningest coach in Division 1 basketball, fear not. Knight gave an interview to Sports Illustrated – something he had not done for more than 10 years – and here is what he told SI about his final years at Indiana:

“The last six years there were not good for me. At every one of the three schools [Army, Indiana and Texas Tech], I’ve worked for really good people. But at every one, there’s also been a sorry bastard or two. I should have left [IU] when the sorry bastards came to power.”

Like him or not, Bob Knight remains an intractable curmudgeon. He will not mellow with age like a fine wine; he will simply grow older…

Finally, an observation from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“ ‘Hoosiers’ has beaten out ‘Rocky’ as the top sports movie of all time, in the estimation of chinaview.cn.

“As for the honor of best sports comedy, it reportedly came down to four finalists: ‘Caddyshack’, ‘The Bad News Bears’ and two Oakland Raiders game films.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…