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Category Archives: Words
Overthinking things
Elite athletes’ ability to focus the brain might even explain their struggle to eloquently describe performance after the game. Like a starship captain diverting power from life support to bolster shields in a battle, professional athletes temporarily shut down the memory-forming regions of the brain so as to maximize activity in centers that guide movement.
“That’s why they usually thank God or their moms,” says cognitive psychologist Sian Beilock of the University of Chicago. “They don’t know what they did, so they don’t know what else to say.”
Not to belabor the Hoyas’ win last night, but it’s hard to read that Science News excerpt without thinking of Hollis Thompson’s postgame quote about his tiebreaking three-pointer:
Um, I mean, I was open, and my teammates found me…. Honestly, I don’t remember.
The Science News article, which comes via Eno Sarris, is a good one but it mostly presents a bunch of evidence to corroborate things we already know from experience playing sports or from those same seemingly uninformative postgame interviews.
You’ll never hear a baseball player say after a walk-off home run that his secret was mentally running through all the potential ramifications of his at-bat while simultaneously considering the various intricacies of his swing mechanics and keeping conscious of the particular home-plate umpire’s strike zone and the pitcher’s arsenal and tendencies.
All of that information exists somewhere in his mind while he’s swinging, of course, but as the article asserts, it is his ability to process it and keep it in his subconscious during the actual important event that in part allows him to succeed.
Sometimes the cliches are cliched for a reason: You really don’t want to overthink things in sports. That’s for bloggers and experimental psychologists. The elite athletes are the ones who, on top of the physical gifts, have the ability to maintain focus on their tasks in spite of myriad pressures and exterior factors, and it’s really only when they waver that we notice it at all. Until then, we just snicker at the seeming meaninglessness of their postgame interviews without considering how we might gladly give up our presumed eloquence for their unfaltering control.
I’m still learning new things about Terry Crews
It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of the actor Terry Crews. After seeing The Expendables, I wrote this:
Put The Expendables down on the list with every other movie ever made (except possibly Idiocracy) under the heading “Films that have underutilized Terry Crews.”
Don’t get me wrong, Crews was awesome in The Expendables, but there should have been way more of him. This man is a towering talent who needs a better vehicle. I’m not kidding. I watched every episode of Everybody Hates Chris only because of how amazing he was in it. He took a mediocre sitcom, put it on his giant shoulders and carried it into hilarity.
I feel like because he’s a huge, jacked black guy, Crews is doomed to get typecast in Tommy “Tiny” Lister Jr. roles. But he is clearly capable of so much more than that. I would go see Eat Pray Love on opening night if Terry Crews played the romantic male lead. Or the Julia Roberts part. Whatever. Dude is unbelievable.
Then before seeing Moneyball, I suggested it would have been better-served with Crews in a lead:
We don’t spend nearly enough time discussing how great Terry Crews is. I watched about a half hour of the movie White Chicks the other night because it had Terry Crews in it. Guy steals every scene he has ever been in.
But despite all my appreciation for the man’s appreciable talents, I did not know until today that Terry Crews actually spent seven years as an NFL defensive end. Blowing my mind right now. Da Vinci is blushing.
“Mr. Met as Sisyphus”
Imagine, then, Mr. Met as Sisyphus, muscling his head up the steep hill of tough Mets history.
– Richard Sandomir, N.Y. Times.
Done.
Read the rest. It’s pretty great, though it’s, ahem, downhill from there. There’s some obvious LOLMets stuff in it, but it’s definitely worth your time.
Mets sign Scott Hairston
According to the Daily News, the Mets have signed Scott Hairston to a Major League contract, pending a physical.
Good. This move has been unanimously endorsed on the Mostly Mets Podcast a couple of times. Hairston plays all three outfield positions pretty well, hits for power off the bench, doesn’t seem to mind a part-time role, and saw Michael Jackson in concert when he was young.
Hairston’s a good defensive replacement for Lucas Duda in right, he can spell Andres Torres in center if necessary, and he’s really not much of a drop-off from 2010-11 Jason Bay in left. This obviously isn’t the move that puts the Mets over the top in 2012, but it’s a fine one regardless.
The Marlins are going to be hilarious
Carlos Zambrano + Ozzie Guillen = Inevitable explosive awesomeness.
That alone would be worth the price of admission, but throw in the hype and hoopla around the Jose Reyes addition and the opening of the new stadium, the meddling art-dealer owner and his art installation of a home-run display, the notorious (and mostly hilarious) fecal-Tweeter of a left-fielder, the moody third baseman who’d rather play shortstop poorly, uniforms forging new territory in ugliness, and the fish tanks being installed behind home plate and you’ve got a recipe for a sports spectacle most thrilling.
Oh, and they’ve still got Josh Johnson and Mike Stanton, who both seem content to contain their explosive awesomeness to baseball fields.
It’s going to be something, even if it amounts to nothing.
Hoyas distracting me from all the suck
You’ll have to indulge me for a second:
OHHHHHHHHHH!
Not sure if any of y’all saw the ninth-ranked Georgetown Hoyas come back from a 17-point deficit midway through the second half against No. 20 Marquette last night at the Verizon Center, but it ranks among the most awesome things that have ever awesomed.
The Hoyas, my alma mater’s basketball squad, are the only team I follow for which I currently maintain any legitimate short-term hope, what with the Jets embroiled in some Beltranian postseason locker-room turmoil and the Mets banking their offseason on Andres Torres, Corey Wimberley and a bunch of relievers that’ll probably be dealt in July if they meet with any success.
And being a Georgetown fan these past couple of years has been not unlike cheering the Mets in 2008, full of promise despite a clearly flawed team — but unencumbered the off-field fuss that has plagued the Mets since — and ultimately ending in heartbreak and disappointment. So when the Hoyas are winning as they have been winning since an early-season loss to Kansas in Hawaii — inspiring all sorts of fawning post-hoc analysis from around the Internet — I watch with some trepidation, knowing as I do that there are dozens of other college hoops teams off to awesome starts and hundreds of others vying for the ultimate prize, that fans of all but one will end up disappointed, that the Big East conference schedule is a bloodthirsty 1,500-pound grizzly of a bear and that all this dizzying post-holiday Hoya-fan exuberance can and likely will be destroyed at some point by a single injury to a key player or a prolonged shooting slump or one of those games where Seton Hall randomly refuses to miss three-pointers.
So though a loss to the nation’s 20-ranked team would hardly spell doom for my Hoyas in January, at some point in the second half I could hear the delusion train leaving the station last night with me still fumbling with my credit card at the ticket machine. I even took to my iPad for some NBA Jam, turning my attention briefly away from the chatter on ESPNU about the undersized Marquette team’s spirited play that somehow neglected to mention the obnoxious way those players seemed more dedicated to drawing fouls than making baskets.
Then, when all seemed bleak — and with Chris Paul heating up, no less — something… something just happened. After about 20 minutes of the Hoya freshmen playing like overwhelmed underclassmen, they yielded to the team’s few veterans.
And all of a sudden Jason Clark, a 6-2 senior guard with Inspector Gadget arms like a 7-footer, is grabbing loose balls and driving to the basket and the Hoyas are trimming the lead. Then Henry Sims, a 6-10 senior center and former top recruit who played laughable basketball until a stern talking-to from his mother refocused him this offseason, is blocking shots at one end of the court and hitting a beautiful fadeaway at the other, and the refs seem on to Marquette’s flop jig and now the difference is down to five. And now Hollis Thompson, a 6-8 junior forward who has never missed a big shot in his life, is nailing them down from all over the floor and the Eagles can’t get out of their own way, and the once-lost game is tied, and I’m punching the arms of my La-Z-Boy and making such a racket in my living room that my wife gets a little freaked out and leaves for a walk because it’s been a long time since she has seen me act this way.
By the time she comes back with cookies — cookies! — the Hoyas have won, 73-70.
Which is to say: OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
That type of night. Let me enjoy this while it lasts, huh?
Sober Hall of Fame stance from drunk Jays fan
In their quest to erase their own involvement, if not illicit participation, in the widespread use of performance enhancing drugs from the history books, while simultaneously imagining an obviously non-existent moral code for members of the club that they act as gate keepers for, baseball writers will render themselves irrelevant in a little over a year’s time when they refuse to allow Barry Bonds, the greatest baseball player many of my generation, and quite possibly any generation, have ever seen play the game, into its no longer hallowed Hall.
– Dustin Parkes, TheScore.com.
Parkes, one of the aforementioned Drunk Jays Fans, takes the same stance I’ve had on the Hall of Fame for a while now: If Barry Bonds — the best player of his generation — doesn’t make the Hall of Fame, then the Hall of Fame is dumb.
I’m not sure I even blame the baseball writers anymore: I’m certain they would endure as much animosity for electing Bonds from fans certain Bonds does not deserve to be enshrined as they will from people like me when they exclude Bonds, and it’s on the Hall of Fame itself to eliminate the morals clause and let everyone know it’s a place to honor great baseball players for great baseball playing, righteousness be damned.
Even the only vaguely conscious voters must recognize by now that the Hall of Fame is riddled with racists, drunks, cheaters and wife-beaters of the vilest ilk, but as long as today’s voters are charged with considering “integrity, sportsmanship and character” they are forced to subject the players on their ballots to their own nebulous and innately biased standards of decency. And that’s frustrating to fans because it’s so utterly murky, and because we have our own standards and our own guys we want voted in to the Hall of Fame and nothing we can damn do about it.
That’s all I really want to say on the matter until next year when Bonds does or doesn’t get elected, and then… well, we’ll see how I feel then, if I still feel feelings. It’ll be sad to me if I have to stop caring about the Hall of Fame entirely then, because I think Cooperstown is an awesome baseball Mecca, and because it’d be sweet to someday take my kids there (assuming they like baseball [and they better]) and tell them about the ridiculous things I saw Bonds do on baseball fields before they were born.
And, you know, that Piazza guy.
Stephen Colbert still awesome
I don’t think you ever say ‘never.’ That’s a discussion I’ll have to have with my family. I’ll need to pray on it.
– Stephen Colbert, on the possibility of running for President.
If you’ve got 20 minutes and you appreciate Colbert as much as I do, read Charles McGrath’s entire N.Y. Times Magazine feature on Colbert’s real and on-camera personas.
Canada disowns Jason Bay
The Toronto Sun published its list of the 100 most influential Canadians in baseball, which includes, among others, noted man-about-the-Internet Jonah Keri, true SABR Tom Tango, former Mets pitching coach Dave Wallace, and Ben Nicholson-Smith of MLBTradeRumors.com.
Not on the list or even in the honorable mentions? You guessed it: Jason Bay, the active Canadian home-run leader. Recent retiree and total hero Matt Stairs was also slighted, perhaps because Matt Stairs belongs to the world now.
The Drunk Jays Fans were also excluded, calling into question the validity of the entire endeavor.
Hat tip to Amazin’ Avenue fanposter Bobby Baseball.
Tedquarters 