Letters to the Editor
-
Knievel
When I was a kid, I had the STP Evil Knievel stunt motorcycle. It was the one where you pull the rip cord and the motorcycle shoots forward. If I still had it, I'd jump it into a ditch in his honor. His inspiring kids to do foolish things is a precursor of today's skaters and daredevils
-
" Rose said he never bet on games he was a part of......"
Well you got me, if Rose said it it must be true.
-
Interesting Tidbit
on Mr. Knieval: He used to attempt his jumps on harley-style (or actual Harleys) motorcycles that were completely unsuited to what he was trying to do with them (jump lots of stuff). He was a crazy dude.
I wonder if Awful Knaufel is still alive?
-
An Evel-inspired concussion
Around 1976, in my grandmother's gravel driveway in Maine, my pal Glenn and I built a really cool ramp using a door we found in the barn. We jumped without incident, but my sister twisted the front wheel on her landing and clonked her head. "It's that crazy son of a bitch Evel Knievel! He's giving them these crazy ideas!" my uncle said. The ER docs said that she had a concussion, but I think she was milking it.
Anybody know how Evel died?
-
OT: ESPN top 25 players
On their list of the top 25 college football players of all time, ESPN momentarily posted all 25 on Saturday morning. No. 2 is Barry Sanders, No. 1 is Red Grange. I'm killing the suspense so you don't have to wait until New Year's for the official announcement. Go ahead and bet somebody at the office that you don't like.
My brother asked me about who had already been selected, so I went to ESPN's website early Saturday morning. It was clearly an error that all 25 were listed on the page. When I checked the page later, only the names announced on TV were shown.
-
Nice line on Kuhn
"If Kuhn is a Hall of Famer, who is next? Jaime Navarro? Tuffy Rhodes?"
Phil Rogers in the Chicago Trib
http://tinyurl.com/3yp5h2
-
Hall of Fame,Evel Knievel article
King -
Nice job.
-
The Hall of Fame, like the Post Office
Only heroes of the counterrevolution get their photos on the postage stamps.
-
Dang!
It took me at least ten minutes to find a decent picture of a spider bike (at least that's what we called them). Is something the matter with the internet today?
http://bluemoonbikes.com/mambo/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,8/
http://www.nostalgic.net/
We had nice grassy humps alongside the angled portion of the driveway. A natural launching pad for every home!
Lynx, you don't care about cheating in baseball, so your argument is kind of...obsessive?
-
The difference between Pete Rose and the steroid gang...
Pete broke a "golden rule" and is being held up as an example because Selieg hates him. It's become a personal vendetta. I have written here before about how gambling is a sickness and an addiction not unlike cocaine or alcohol. Pete Rose, for all his immense contributions to the game of baseball as a player, has never gotten his second chance, unlike many players who got second chances after failing drug test after drug test. The problem is that MLB has it's priorities screwed up. Gambling is more of a crime than doctoring your own chemistry to get a competitive edge. It's more of a crime than things like recreational drug abuse, that are actually criminal in the real world. Selieg and Bart G. before him, have proven inept at enacting rules that are balanced and protect baseball. I believe that the ineffective HGH/steroid policies may very well come from the Pete Rose factor, as Selieg would rather hold Rose to the highest of standards than tackle a real crisis in the sport today.
King wrote today... "and in a few years it'll start being notably absent some deserving players who happened to be among the few who either got caught taking or were widely assumed to have taken steroids".
I stopped reading after that. I have such a fundamentally different view on this. To me its the worst kind of cheating. Clearly some are willing to look the other way and give comfort to our synthetic sports stars. So the time to draw the line in the sand is now. Do we give amnesty to all the cheaters in the game from 2007 and before, Joe Jackson and Pete Rose included so we can also have our McGuire and Bonds? Or do we keep with the double standard and march forward to the destruction of all credibility in baseball. Selieg? King?
-
TO: Red Leg
Pete played on the field like only he could.
I loved watching him.
I'm 68 so, you know how far back I got with whom I've seen play ball.
I was born in Chicago and saw everyone from "I'm mr Important dimaggio" to Teddy Ballhgame to my ALL TIME FAVORTIE, The Mick and all those who came after.
I never ever saw anybody play the way Pete Rose did and, for that, HE IS IN MY HALL OF FAME.
The keyboard puncher's story about Evel was ok however, when it comes to their type, it is time for
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz's.
-
handlebar
Just because I'm not a fan doesn't mean I don't care about cheating in baseball. I have a passing interest in baseball and most sports. I'm not saying the cheating in baseball doesn't matter, I'm asking whether 1) it was cheating in any way more than breaking an arbitrary rule and 2) where one draws the line on breaking these rules before it should get you thrown out of the sport or kept out of the hall.
1) If it didn't actually affect performance on the field, why should it be considered cheating
2) If it did affect performance, what level of cheating is acceptable?
And as a bonus, how do steroids really affect baseball players? Does it give them a measurable advantage? Is it really all that different from medical treatments and pain killers and superior facilities that allow players to break the records of old? If Jim Thorpe had had access to the same training, medical equipment and treatments right down to better nutrition would his record still stand today?
Steroids are just the next step in this process, they should be evaluated and studied and used under the supervision of a trainer/doctor, just like everything else. Until then we have nothing more than hysteria and paranoia.