The MLB team in Cleveland will assume a new name starting in 2022. I never agreed that the name “Indians” was racist, but I could see clearly how the tam mascot, Chief Wahoo, was seriously offensive to many Native Americans. So, the team set out on a 2-year quest to find a new name. In its press releases along the way, the team said it had considered 1200 possible names. Now, if that statement is true, I have a question:
- How did you wind up with a team name as lame as the Cleveland Guardians?
Seriously, if I woke you up from a dead sleep at 2:00 AM and asked you to give me all your free association thoughts that go with “Cleveland”, would you have gotten to “Guardians” any time before 6:00 AM? The explanation offered is that the team is named in alignment with 4 large statues on a bridge in Cleveland and the statues are known collectively as the “Guardians of Traffic”. It took almost 2 years and 1199 other possible names to come up with that. Well, OK then…
There will be a test next season to see if anyone in the MLB scheduling department has even a shred of a sense of humor. Clearly, the Guardians should open the season at home; Opening Day with the new team name and the new logo should be a big deal. And MLB can contribute to the upbeat feeling if it schedules the Angels to be the opponents that day. It would be the Guardians versus the Angels.
Complicating matters for the moment is the fact that Cleveland Guardians is already an amateur roller derby team in the city. I have to believe that an amateur roller derby team could be induced to sell that team name to the MLB team for an amount of money that would be pocket change to the baseball team and manna from Heaven to the roller derby team. Nevertheless, stay tuned…
The Tokyo Olympics are in progress and the viewing of the events on the myriad NBC “platforms” is about as inconvenient as can be. Meanwhile, there was an announcement from the IOC that has gotten only marginal reporting and commentary:
- The Summer Games for 2032 have been awarded to Brisbane, Australia.
I have spent 3 weeks in Australia but none of that time was spent in Brisbane. However, let me relate a story from that trip. We had an excellent trip leader for those three weeks and as we were having a glass of wine to say goodbye to him, I said that I would like to come back to Australia one day to see three cities that we had missed on this trip – – Perth, Darwin and Brisbane. Matt – our trip leader – looked at me quizzically and asked:
“Why would anyone want to go to Brizzy?”
According to the IOC and officials in “Brizzy”, the cost of staging the Summer Games there is expected to be $3.2B. Anyone who believes that also believes that an outpatient is someone who fainted in a doctor’s waiting room. The Tokyo Olympics running now were “budgeted” at $7.5B and when the final tally is done thoroughly, the cost is going to be closer to $20B than it is to $15B. Remember, Tokyo already had some of the facilities needed to stage these Games and it ran up costs that will be more than double the estimated cost plus the original budget was already twice as much as the announced figure for Brisbane.
Brisbane will be the third city in Australia to host the Summer Games. Melbourne was the host city in 1956 and Sydney was the host city in 2000.
- Quick Quiz: No Googling or Binging… Other than Australia, only the US has hosted the summer Games in 3 different cities. Name the three US cities that have hosted the summer Games?
- The answer is below…
I mentioned above that the TV viewing for the Olympics this year is inconvenient. I understand that the inconvenience is caused by the fact that there is a 13-hour time difference between my locale and the Game venue. [Aside: Just so you know, the time difference for those Brisbane Games in 2032 will be 14 hours.] But the “inconvenience of the hour” is only the beginning of the overall inconvenience:
- There is an innumerable quantity of ads – – and these are not simple little 10-second ads saying that this isolation camera shot is presented by National Veeblefetzer. These ads seem to have the same duration as the break in an NFL game to give you the 2-minute warning.
- There is no pace or rhythm to the coverage I have tried to watch. The program keeps jumping from an event to a sidebar story to a bunch of studio talking heads and back to an event seemingly at the whim of someone in a control booth somewhere.
- So far, I have tried to get involved with events in sports that I like to watch – – such as basketball, soccer and some of the track and field events. If I am feeling inconvenienced/frustrated by the presentation of those events, can it be any wonder that I am not excited to tune in to see a sport that I do not care about such as skateboarding, rhythmic gymnastics or kayaking?
Answer to the Quick Quiz above:
- Los Angeles (1932, 1984, 2028) and
- Atlanta (1996) and
- St. Louis (1904).
Finally, since golf is part of the ongoing Olympic Games this year, let me close with this view of golf expressed by H. L. Mencken:
“If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
You would have to be a smart person to have known “St. Louis – 1904.” I am not that person.
Somehow St Louis jumped in my head, I have no idea how that happened! Maybe something about the adage, I can’t remember what I had for breakfast but I can remember something one hundred and seventeen years ago.
T.C.LaTorre:
There are “facts not worth remembering” that stick in my head for reasons unknown. The reason I “know” about the St. Louis Olympics is that I remember being told that the practice of awarding gold, silver and bronze medals was introduced at the Olympics in St. Louis in 1904. I remember the 1904 date because that is the year my father was born.
All that plus four bucks will get me a Starbucks grande skim latte…