Swift Kicks

FANS UNHINGED

2011-06-16T12:05:00.000-04:00

An otherwise memorable playoff season was badly marred last night as thousands of unhinged, moronic, presumably drunken Canuck fans rioted after the Bruins dominant 4-0 Game Seven win, causing millions of dollars of damage to their beautiful city and a permanent stain on Vancouver's image. An ancillary victim of the carnage: hockey itself, which now has the word "hooligans" branded on its Canadian fans, much as the sport of soccer has on its fans in Great Britain.

Canadian fans? Is it fair to throw an entire country under Vancouver's deranged bus? Well, I've spent a lot of time covering hockey in Canada, and I've seen this kind of thing before. In 1993, the last time a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup, Montreal fans rioted in the streets afterward, breaking windows on St. Catherine's street, looting, and overturning cars. That was the first time I'd ever seen such a mindlessly crazy reaction (I had to walk through the rioters on my way back to the hotel to write my story for Sports Illustrated...the Canadiens had beaten Wayne Gretzky's LA Kings), and that was after a WIN! Since then it has become something of an annual ritual in Montreal. Google "Montreal Canadiens fans riot" and you will find that they also rioted after beating the Penguins in 2010 and after a lowly first round win over the Bruins in 2008. In 1994 Vancouver fans rioted after the team lost in Game 7 of the Finals to the New York Rangers. There's a pattern here.

But last night's riot appears to have been much worse, and unfortunately I can't say I'm shocked that it happened. During the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, after the U.S. men's hockey team beat the Canadians in a preliminary round game, there was enough simmering anger in the streets that I was concerned about the possibility of a riot if the US beat Canada in the gold medal game. It didn't happen, but I now firmly believe if it had things would have turned very ugly, and an otherwise great Olympics might have been spoiled. Tens of thousands of people were in the streets during the gold medal game, drinking heavily, wearing team colors, hollering CA!NA!DA! in unison, feeding off the mob's collective energy. Once that energy turns negative, tempers ignite and destruction follows. Especially if the police is unprepared for it, as, incredibly given the history, Vancouver's seemed to be last night. It's unfathomable how an otherwise polite, measured society--Canada--that prides itself on its manners can become so completely unbalanced over the result of a hockey game. But it has happened with some regularity. And it happened last night in the extreme, tarnishing an otherwise wonderful playoffs for the NHL. (The overnight ratings for Game 7 tied the best Stanley Cup ratings ever, and in Boston they were a stunning 43.4 with a 64 share--nearly 2/3rds of the TVs that were on were tuned to the game.)

Far better to try to remember the 2011 playoffs, both in basketball and hockey, for the triumph of perseverance and teamwork over superstars and flash. The Bruins best player was 37-year-old Tim Thomas, the Conn Smythe winner as the playoff MVP, and the definition of a late bloomer. A career minor-leaguer, he broke into the NHL in 2005 at age 31 and did not even open this season as the Bruins starting netminder. The rest of the team, and I include Zdeno Chara, their 6' 9" captain, is cast in blue collar mold, long on substance and grit, short on style and flash. Honest, tough, hard-working and team oriented. That's the Bruins. They aren't beautiful. But they're a close knit group; a fist, not fingers.

The Dallas Mavericks? They had one superstar, 32-year-old Dirk Nowitzki, but until this playoff season, he was a tarnished one, accused of being soft when the stakes were the highest.

No one believed that he and his Mavs teammates could stand up to Miami's "Big Three": Lebron James, Chris Bosh, and Dwayne Wade. But it turned out that at crunch time it was the Mavs who stepped up, while the "Big Three", especially James, did a disappearing act and played soft. In the Game Six clincher, Nowitzki had a terrible first half, shooting 1-for-12. But his role-playing teammates took up the slack and gave Dallas the lead, with veterans like Jason Terry and Jason Kidd, and the undrafted J.J. Barea, doing the scoring. It's practically all Nowitzki, the Finals MVP, talked about after the game. How his teammates had carried him until he found his rhythm. The team prevailed over the individual stars. It's why most of America was cheering for the previously unloved Mavericks.

So the long winter sports season is finally over, and I cannot remember a year when there were two more absorbing finals, and two more deserving champions. Nor can I remember a reaction to a sports event that left a fouler taste in my mouth than the one put on by Vancouver's "fans" last night. The city should be hanging its collective head in shame, and Canada's hockey-mad culture should be taken to the woodshed and taught to get a grip.

Don't Eat his Index Finger: Eat Tongue

2011-06-03T11:54:00.000-04:00

The NHL finals got off to a rousing start Wednesday, with all the elements in place for a memorable series between the Vancouver Canucks and Boston Bruins. Both fan bases are long-suffering: In their 40-year history, the Canucks have never won the Stanley Cup; the Bruins haven't won in 39 years. National pride, curiously, is at stake: A Canadian-based team hasn't won the Cup since 1993, an unprecedented drought for a hockey-obsessed nation. So is civic pride. Think Boston isn't still a hockey town? Game One, a classic 1-0 defensive gem won by the Canucks, drew a 25.5 rating and 39-share in the Boston market, blowing away the 19.1 rating/ 34 share Game One of last year's NBA Finals between the Celtics and Lakers, the NBA's marquis match-up. And now there is some genuine ill-will between these two teams who have very little history between them. Vancouver's Alex Burrows chomped down on Patrice Bergeron's index finger during a first period scrum, biting hard enough to break the skin.

Burrows chows down

The NHL chose not to suspend him, and the Bruins will be looking for payback. For story-lines, this series gives sportswriters much to chew on.

I'm taking myself out of the prediction game, having gone a pathetic 1-3 in the second round. In today's NHL--and this is starkly different from the league I grew up watching--the better goalie usually beats the better team in a playoff series, so prognostications are little more than guesswork. Vancouver had the best record in the NHL's regular season, so they would appear to be the favorite. But home-ice has not proved to be much of an advantage in these playoffs, and Bruins goalie Tim Thomas, the probable Vezina Trophy winner, is capable of winning a series all by himself.
So is Vancouver's goalie, Roberto Luongo, for that matter. The better goalie over the next ten days will win this series. That's my prediction.

Interestingly, they play completely different styles. Luongo's big; he plays on his knees; and he plays deep in his net, meaning the Bruins had better rattle their shots off the top post to beat him, as Chicago was able to do in the first round against Vancouver. That's all Luongo gives you.

Roberto Luongo

His one weakness is that he's terrible at handling the puck. The Bruins dump and chase a lot, so they might be able to take advantage of that. But I don't think they snipe well enough to score a lot of goals in this series. And their power play is awful. Boston was 0-for-21 in its seven-game win over Montreal in the first round, becoming the first team to win a playoff series without scoring a power play goal.

Thomas, by contrast, is aggressive and will challenge a shooter from the top of his crease. He's athletic, flexible, and unorthodox.

Tim Thomas

He reminds me quite a bit of Dominick Hasek, often making saves while flat on his back. But I'd be surprised if Vancouver, by making an extra pass or intentionally banking a shot off the backboards, wasn't able to exploit Thomas' aggressiveness into some open net tap-ins, similar to the only goal scored in Game One, which came in the final 18 seconds. Vancouver's Sedin twins love to make plays from behind and beside the net, making the extra pass that sometimes gives Thomas trouble. Don't be misled by shots-on-goal totals in this series. The Bruins will take more shots, but the Canucks will get the better scoring chances. Who will win will be decided by the goalies, however, who in my opinion have outgrown the size of their cages.

Daniel and Henrik Sendin

Now, a few words about the incredible, edible tongue.

13 1/2 inches of low-fat protein

As you can see by this photo, a cow's tongue is a real mouthful. The average weight is about three pounds. This one came from Beal Beef, a grass-fed beef operation in New Hampshire run by our good friends George and Barbara Beal. If you have an interest in ordering grass fed beef and reside in the Boston area, I strongly urge you to contact Barbara at barbara.beal@comcast.net. (Full disclosure: they are temporarily out of beef tongues.) All grass-fed beef is low in fat and high in protein, but the tongue is also chock full of vitamin B-12, which boosts production of red blood cells. If you are anemic, get thee some tongue! It is mild in flavor, excellent in salads and sandwiches, can be served hot or cold, and has a proud history. Every Monday for the fifteen years he was in the White House, President Franklin Roosevelt ate beef tongue for dinner.

I don't know why so few Americans eat tongue these days. Fifty years ago it was a staple. It's easy to prepare. You simply put the tongue into a pot, cover it with 3 cups chicken stock plus enough water to cover the tongue, one peeled and quartered yellow onion, two chopped carrots, two chopped celery sticks, and a dozen peppercorns. Boil for 2-2 1/2 hours. Remove from broth until cool enough to handle. (I strain and reserve the remaining liquid and use it for beef broth.) Take a sharp knife and make a slit in the tough outer skin of the tongue, and peel off the skin to reveal the smooth, pink flesh. Slice and serve.
Because it is so mild in flavor, it needs some spice or seasonings to make it interesting. Capers. Hot mustard. Peppers. Onions. It's excellent on a bed of flavorful swiss chard, covered with a lemon vinaigrette. Below it's served on a bed of lettuce, smothered in capers and a vinaigrette.
Mr. Burrows, this is not finger food. You will need a knife and fork. Bon appetite!

First Round Highlights, Second round predictions

2011-04-28T16:26:00.000-04:00

Hawks goalie Corey Crawford

I couldn't let the gallant comeback efforts of the Chicago Blackhawks, 2010 Stanley Cup champions, pass without comment. For those who didn't stay up till 1 a.m. to see the end of the Game 7 thriller, the cliff notes version is: a) Vancouver, which had lost three straight, scored in the opening minutes and held that 1-0 lead entering the third period. They were desperate and very physical. b) Chicago goalie Corey Crawford stopped a penalty shot by Vancouver's Alex Burrows just 27 seconds into the 3rd, the first Game 7 penalty shot in Stanley Cup playoff history, believe it or not. c) Crawford continued making one breathtaking save after another to keep the Hawks in it. d) Hawks Captain Jonathon Toews tied the game with just 1:56 remaining, shorthanded, no less, whacking in his first goal of the series while lurching up from his knees. e) Burrows won it with his second goal of the game after an unfortunate turnover early in the overtime, but not before he'd taken a penalty in the opening seconds of OT to give Hawks fans further reason to believe destiny was smiling at them.

Ben Smith wins Game 6

It was one of the best hockey games I've ever seen. The Hawks, who'd backed into the playoffs, had fallen behind three games to none, but showed their hearts by nearly becoming just the 4th team in NHL history to come back from that deficit. And they did it against the team with the NHL's best record in the regular season, and against the league's top goalie, Roberto Luongo, who was pulled from two straight starts. Crawford, a rookie, got better every game of the series, and looks like a keeper going forward. Decimated by salary cap cuts last summer after winning their first Stanley Cup since 1961, the Blackhawks proved that GM Stan Bowman has assembled enough young talent to keep them one of the league's elite teams for years to come. They are led by two 22-year-old superstars, Toews and Patrick Kane, and their top defense pair of Duncan Keith (27) and Brent Seabrook (25) will be in their prime for another decade. Another 22-year-old, former Boston College Eagle Ben Smith, who'd played in only 6 NHL games prior to the series, emerged as the surprise of the playoffs, scoring three goals including the OT winner in Game 6. This is a very, very exciting team with a great future, and it's a shame their run and gun style is not going to be on display the rest of the playoffs. They play beautiful hockey.
I've always believed the first round of the Stanley Cup was the best entertainment of the playoffs. The teams are fresh, the energy high, and the upsets are many. Eight sedes beating top sedes happens all the time. Why? The goaltenders in hockey have a disproportionate effect on the outcome of a short series. The better goalie will often beat the better team. As the playoffs drag on, the players start to wear down, and nagging injuries effect the quality of play. The energy levels just cannot stay at that early fever pitch. This year's first round will especially be remembered as a great one. The last two nights I watched four game 7s, something I never remember doing before, or being able to do. Vancouver-Chicago was by far the best of these, though the Bruins-Canadiens grudge match also went into overtime. But the skill level of Montreal-Boston was noticeably below that of Vancouver-Chicago.

Edwards and Brickley: The worst

      Though I live in Boston, I actually ended up rooting for Montreal. Why? Bruins announcers Jack Edwards and Andy Brickley are such insufferable homers that they ruin the game for me. I have one friend who, smartly, just turns them to mute. Brickley tries to sound like a college professor, taking twenty words to say something when four will do. Instead of "he should skate harder", Brickley will bombast thusly: "He needs to eliminate those portions of the hockey game when his legs are at the ready but remain motionless while his skates are gliding, and endeavor to sink his edges deeper into the ice surface to propel himself with greater alacrity and tenacity."
     Edwards, meanwhile, sounds like an utter lunatic, especially when there's a fight or when someone makes a big hit. Check out this clip from a game against the Philadelphia Flyers, when Edwards does his mad scientist laugh after watching a Flyers forward pummeled into the boards from behind.
He sounds like someone who should be committed. In last night's Game 7 against the Canadiens, Montreal forward Jeff Halpern, 34, a classy player throughout his career, was given a cheapshot a zone behind the play which sent him to the ice with a possible concussion. It was a totally uncalled for, dirty play in the 3rd period of a do-or-die game. The ref didn't see it, so it wasn't called. But it was caught on tape. Instead of recognizing the Bruins luck, never mind acknowledging that sort of play has no place in the game, Brickley kept repeating that plays of that nature happen all the time in the NHL. (Right, and they lead to suspensions.) Then Edwards sunk to a new low by announcing he was "putting the clock on him" when Halpern was led to the dressing room so trainers could examine him for a possible concussion. New NHL safety rules say players should stay there for 15 minutes to be properly examined. When Halpern returned six minutes later, Edwards began ranting about how the NHL wasn't properly enforcing its own safety procedures, and that Halpern should not be allowed back before the full 15 minutes had expired. He was outraged. Never mind that it was game 7 of the playoffs, and that the Bruins' Andrew Ference, who'd delivered the cheap shot, had assisted on the go-ahead goal while Halpern was in the dressing room. The whole sequence ruined the game for me.

Okay, prediction time: Detroit Red Wings vs San Jose Sharks
These are the two best teams remaining in the playoffs, I believe, and the winner will take the Stanley Cup. Detroit is playing fantastic, and they're rested.
Prediction: Detroit in 7.

Vancouver Canucks vs. Nashville Predators
   Tough one. The Preds are playing great, and Vancouver is tired. But I think Roberto Luongo has emerged from the Chicago series a stronger goalie mentally, and perhaps the Canucks team has, too.
Vancouver in 7.

Boston Bruins vs. Philadelphia Flyers
A rematch of last year's first round, when the Flyers became the first team since 1975 and only the third in history to win a series after falling behind three games to none. It won't be that close this time. With Chris Pronger back on defense and Danny Briere at the top of his game, the Flyers will handle the Bruins.
Flyers in 6

Washington Capitals vs. Tampa Bay Lightning.
   If you care about hockey, root, root, root for the Capitals. Tampa Bay is playing a stultifying 1-3-1 defensive scheme, abandoning forechecking. Yes, it leads to wins like the 1-0 Game 7 shutout last night over the Penguins. But it is a snooze cruise all the way. Meanwhile, Washington has learned how to play defense, and the best player in the playoffs, Alex Ovechkin, has bought in.

Capitals in 5.

Bears Thump Eagles: A Bird in Hand

2010-11-29T16:24:00.000-05:00

Among the fascinating tidbits I picked up from our Thanksgiving quiz this year is that:
   a) an adult turkey has about 3500 feathers
   b) Minnesota raises more domesticated turkeys than any other state, including Arkansas
   c) Israel consumes more turkey per capita than the U.S. or Canada. Or Turkey.

Here's a picture I took of a turkey displaying in our yard in Carlisle, Mass. last spring, a hunka-hunka burning love....

Here's the same turkey in profile. He looks exactly like the paper turkeys which used to decorate the Thanksgiving table at the Onwentsia Club when I was a kid. I love this shot. Look at that tiny head. And you can easily see how he would have 3500 feathers. Benjamin Franklin lobbied hard to have the wild turkey named our national bird, and I'm sorry that he failed, especially since they keep ending up in the White House.

(That remark is non-partisan, by the way.)

Ordinarily I write something about sports in this column, but I am so pleased with my beloved Chicago Bears win over the high-flying Eagles yesterday that I've decided to write about birds instead. I have some unusual pictures I've been lucky enough to snap in the last couple of years, and I have an idea for a Christmas gift for the bird lover in your family. You won't even have to get in the car.
   I'll begin with the most unusual bird picture in my repertoire, which was taken in Spring Island, South Carolina, just after Christmas in 2007. I was standing in our driveway around dusk when I heard a strange, meowing sound above me, and looked up to see this owl on a branch.

Great Horned Owl

It was a Great Horned owl. They are common there, but shy and difficult to photograph. This one wasn't hooting. It was meowing like a cat. It was very strange, because it was being answered by another Great Horned Owl that was hooting nearby.
       "Meow....meow... "
        "Hoo-hoo, hoot-hoot-hoot."
      This went on for a couple of minutes. Suddenly the hooting stopped and out of the corner of my eye I saw something swoop over my head. I raised the camera and snapped a picture of two great horned owls...copulating.

Slam, bam...

It took about three seconds, then the male swooped off into the fading light...

...Thank you, ma'am

...leaving the female speechless, meowless, and sitting exactly where she had been when I'd first seen her. Even in that dim light, I would describe her expression as underwhelmed.

Looking underwhelmed

Probably my favorite bird, on Spring Island or anywhere else, is the pileated woodpecker, otherwise known as the Woody Woodpecker bird. It is crazy large and has a crazy wukwukwuk cackle and hammers away at dead and dying trees in search of grubs and beetles like a lumberjack. This shot was taken in northern Wisconsin. He was so intent on drilling this dead birch tree he let me get pretty close to him:

Pileated woodpecker

Another favorite is the scarlet tanager. I've only seen a handful in my life. They never come to the feeder, though we have a family of tanagers that lives near us in Carlisle, perhaps even on the property, somewhere in the woods I suppose. Every couple of years I'd see one, so easily recognized with its shocking red feathers with black wings. Three years ago we built a water feature in the back, a couple of rivulets running down a bank, over rocks, into a small pool. It had a couple of pint sized waterfalls. We did it because the area was shady and wouldn't grow grass. Little did we know once completed it would attract all manner of birdlife, including scarlet tanagers. (It even attracted a Great Blue Heron last fall, which flew in and dined on the fish and bullfrogs that lived there.) The tanagers, normally so reclusive, loved to take baths in the running water. Who knew?

Scarlet Tanager

Which brings me to my mother's favorite bird, the rose-breasted grosbeak. When we were kids, growing up in Lake Forest, Ill., my brothers and I always wanted a BB gun. My mother forbade it. She didn't trust us, with reason. She was sure we'd either use it to shoot each other or, worse, one of the birds that came to the feeders. One year a rose-breasted grosbeak built a nest in the thorn tree that grew beside our whiffle ball park. This development was sufficiently earth shattering that all games that spring were summarily cancelled by my mother, the Commish, who watched from the upstairs hall window as mama grosbeak laid three eggs and sat on them till they hatched. When the chicks were still little more than featherless blobs, a gray squirrel climbed into the tree one day and approached the nest while mama grosbeak chattered helplessly. My mother's squeals were a good deal more piercing, and all three sons were called upon to defend the nest from the squirrel. Since we didn't have a BB-gun, and were afraid of thorns, we fired tennis balls and sticks and golf balls at the critter from the base of the tree, without result. I knew the game was up when three headless grosbeak corpses, which looked exactly like miniature roasted turkeys, dropped to the ground and the squirrel bounded away, sated. Apparently the head of a baby bird is the most nutritious part. We got our BB-gun the next day, but the grosbeak flew away and never came back.
Ever since, a rose-breasted grosbeak has made my heart leap. We have a family of them that comes to our feeder and pigs out on sunflower seeds every summer, then disappears into the woods from whence they came. They are not particularly shy. But here is an unusual shot of an immature male, who is just beginning to attain the signature rose-colored patch on its breast.

immature male rose-breasted grosbeak

        Now, the Christmas present idea. If someone in your family enjoys birds, and likes identifying birds by their calls, there is a new book out called Bird Songs Bible which is published by Chronicle Books. It weighs about 20 pounds and comes with an attached recording device which can play the call of every single bird that nests in North America, nearly 750 in all, plus at least one that doesn't: the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, now believed to be extinct again after temporarily making a fleeting comeback in the swamps of Arkansas. (The Ivory-Billed looks like a pileated, but its call is more like one of those old bicycle horns with the squeeze-bulb: Toot-toot-toot)   The calls are from audio recordings made by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and include such rarities as calls of petrels and shearwaters who only vocalize at sea. Also turkeys, great horned owls, scarlet tanagers and rose-breasted grosbeaks. There are color illustrations of all 728 species, plus a diagram of their range and habitat, and while the illustrations are not to scale (the hummingbird is the same size as the turkey vulture) they are pleasant to peruse. It should be noted that this book will be of absolutely no use in the field: it is too cumbersome and the drawings don't show the birds in flight. But at cocktail hour it is a fun tome. The most comprehensive book of its kind, it retails for an imposing $125. But for readers of this blog, it can by ordered from Amazon for a more palatable $75 by clicking the link below.
   Or not.
   The important thing is BEARS WIN! BEARS WIN! BEARS WIN!
    Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.

Yuna Kim fires Orser and The World's Best Salsa recipe

2010-08-25T11:22:00.000-04:00

Like most pundits in the figure skating world, I am scratching my head at the news that Yuna Kim has parted with her coach, Brian Orser, six months after she won the Gold Medal at the Vancouver Olympics.
   It wasn't the only change "Queen Yuna", as she's known in Korea, has made since her breathtaking performance at the Olympics. She also switched management teams in April, scrapping IB Sports, the Korean company that made her one of the five wealthiest female athletes in the past year with an estimated $9.7 million in earnings, to start her own agency, All That Sports, which is run by Kim's mother, Meehee Park. Those 25% management fees are now all in the family.
The announcement of the coaching change was made by Orser's management agency, IMG. Let the P.R. war begin.
   This is all changing hourly, but here's a synopsis of what's come out so far.
     1) Orser tells various media outlets he was blindsided by the news of the coaching change, which he and coaching partner Tracy Wilson received from Yuna's mother on Aug. 2. Orser adds that Yuna didn't know what was going on either. He suspected something was amiss, he says, because his emails weren't being answered. He also felt "disrespected" when he learned second-hand that Yuna's new short program was being choreographed by Canadaian ice dancer Shea-Lynn Bourne, with whom Orser had never worked. Orser claims money has nothing to do with the split, that he never had a contract with Yuna, that he never got a bonus from her for winning the Gold, and that he was the lowest paid coach at that level in skating, charging her only $110 an hour. But he loved Yuna and wished her well.

     2) Yuna Kim's camp responds to that opening salvo by saying Orser knew perfectly well why they were leaving him, but they do not believe it's the sort of thing that should be aired in public. Yuna writes on her Facebook page she is "disappointed and saddened" that Orser would pretend to be blindsided, and that she couldn't sit idly by and let her mother take the blame for the coaching change when she, too, was involved. She says that she is an adult and she and her mother made the decision together. Yuna further contends the relationship between her and Orser was never as perfect as the media made it out to be, and that it had been increasingly "awkward and ambiguous" in the last few months. She also says the fact that Mao Asada of Japan, her arch-rival, approached Orser about coaching her was not the main reason she was leaving. She implies, though, it was a factor.
      Okay, here's what I think.
      Money has to be the main reason for the split. Orser's claim to the contrary doesn't pass the smell test. If he truly didn't get a bonus after Yuna Kim won a gold medal, he has every right to be angry. The girl made almost $10 million last year! Furthermore, he is represented by IMG, and all IMG cares about is money. You think his agent at IMG is going to let him charge only $110 an hour to the Olympic favorite with no incentives built in? Ha! IMG also owns Stars on Ice, which Yuna Kim does not skate for. My guess is that IMG was applying some sort of heavy-handed pressure on Kim, who has her own skating show in Korea, to join Stars, and it blew up in their face. They may even have been using Mao Asada as a weapon: If you don't want Brian to take on Mao, you should skate with "Stars..." this winter. I wouldn't put it past them. They only know heavy-handed.
   The sad thing is that such a successful team should now be broken apart. Yes, as Yuna said in her Facebook message, skater's change coaches all the time. But not after they win an Olympic gold medal and skate two programs for the ages. At least not when the coach is as easy going and positive as Orser and his coaching partner Tracy Wilson are. The laid back, relaxed atmosphere at the Toronto Cricket Club, where they coach, was the perfect landing spot for the stressed-out Kim when she arrived there at age 15. I visited there last December, and, despite all the pressure she was feeling from home to win, Yuna was clearly happy training under Orser. I don't believe the problems that developed originated between the two of them. And one thing was and is certain: her mother, Meehee Park, calls the shots. Yuna is not going to buck her. Somehow IMG and/or Orser ran afoul of the mother, and it caused the rupture of a terrific skating partnership, one that created what I believe to be the finest gold medal performance in Olympic history. It'll be interesting to see what develops.

Okay, now for the Recipe of the Week. This is a great way to enjoy those ripe tomatoes from your garden or local farmer's market, a salsa recipe I found in a book called The Heirloom Tomato by Amy Goldman (a gift from son Nathaniel last Christmas). The key is the first step: mince one medium red onion and marinate in the juice from 1/2 lime (about 2 tbls), 1 tsp. salt, and freshly ground pepper for 20 minutes. In the meantime, chop about 2 lbs. tomatoes into 1/2 inch pieces, add 2 cloves of minced garlic, 1 jalapena pepper (finely minced and seeds removed), and 1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro. Add to the onion and lime mixture and serve. Great as a dip with tortilla chips, or as a relish on poultry or omelets. Truly addictive! Summer on a chip!

The PGA controversy, Plagiarizing at The Times, and Jim Gray

2010-08-16T13:03:00.000-04:00

I know, I know...it's been awhile. Just back from my niece's lovely wedding in Chevy Chase, Md., where more than one friend commented on the abandonment of Swift Kicks since the Vancouver Olympics. The truth is, I've turned into a farmer this summer, having requisitioned a plot at the Carlisle Community Gardens, and haven't had the least inclination to sit down and write. I used to think time and tide waited for no man. Now my standard for unrelenting impatience is summer squash and green beans waiting to be picked. You want tomatoes? Right now my counter is covered with about 150 of them in various shapes and sizes in search of a mouth or a recipe. It's enough to make a man sit down and face his blog.

It was a fascinating final round at the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits in Kohler, Wisconsin. As most of you know by now, Dustin Johnson was assessed a two-stroke penalty for grounding his club in a bunker on the 18th hole, an infraction that cost him a spot in the playoff. It was a sad thing for Johnson and the tournament, but CBS announcers made it sadder than it should have been. Announcer David Feherty practically wept while revisiting the offending bunker, telling CBS viewers it never crossed his mind it was, in fact, a bunker, rather than a bare patch of ground. He could see no discernible lip, no rake, and footprints were all over the sand, left by spectators who'd been standing there. His take? Johnson had been jobbed.
I like Feherty, but I have trouble believing it never crossed his mind Johnson was in a bunker. While watching the telecast, when I saw Johnson ground his club while addressing the ball, my heart immediately jumped. It was clear to me he was in one of those shoddy bunkers: there are something like 1200 of them scattered around that course. None of CBS's announcers--Jim Nantz, Feherty, Nick Faldo--said anything when Johnson grounded his club, however, so I assumed the bunkers beyond the ropes had been designated waste areas. A waste area is not considered a hazard, and golfers are allowed to take practice swings and ground their clubs when in them. Why? Because waste areas aren't raked, and the surface of the sand is uneven and unpredictable within them, often marred by footprints and tire tracks. The bunker Dustin Johnson found himself in on the 18th hole, which the gallery had been standng in, was just such a place. It should have been declared a waste area, but it hadn't been. PGA officials had specifically posted signs in the media center and the locker rooms alerting players to the fact that those areas were considered hazards and to be treated as if they were bunkers. Johnson should have known that. Feherty, who had the benefit of going back and standing in the bunker, certainly should have recognized it for what it was. And Nantz and Faldo should have known the local rule and said something while Feherty was carrying on as if Johnson had been robbed. Eventually a PGA rules official interviewed by Peter Kostis cleared the matter up. But it was not the finest bit of sports television I've ever seen. Then again, none of those involved--Nantz, Faldo or Feherty--should be considered a journalist.

   So what's Jim Gray's excuse? This guy makes Keith Olbermann look objective. First there was his absurd performance during the LeBron James telecast a few weeks ago on ESPN, in which the self-aggrandizing Gray waited six minutes to ask the only question a real journalist would have cared to ask: Which team was James jumping to? I didn't think it was possible for him to sink any lower, but he managed to on the eve of the PGA Championship, when Gray confronted Ryder Cup captain Corey Pavin outside the press center, jabbed his chest with his finger, called Pavin a "liar", and told Pavin he was "going down." Huh? Down where? The hole that Gray crawled out of? Pavin's offense? He told the press conference that Gray had misquoted him when Gray reported on the Golf Channel that Pavin said he'd offer Tiger Woods a spot on the Ryder Cup team, even if Tiger didn't qualify for one of the automatic selections.
      My take? Anyone who's ever covered sports for any length of time has been accused of misquoting an athlete. It's very possible Pavin told Gray exactly what Gray reported. It's also possible he told it to him off the record. It's possible there was a misunderstanding between the two about what was on and off the record. These things happen. Athletes say things all the time they later regret. Often the default response is to say they were misquoted. Or misinterpreted. It's happened to me a couple of times over the years. The way for a journalist to handle it is to privately discuss the athlete's concerns with him (or her), and, if you still believe you are right, to publicly stand by your story.   That's it. "I stand by my story." No name calling. No jabbing in the chest. No calling someone a liar. And certainly no threatening that "You're going down!!"? Gray was unprofessional to the extreme. It was, and is, inexcusable. Any network that hires him going forward should know what they are getting: an unprofessional personality with axes to grind. Not a journalist.
       Finally--while speaking of bad journalism--under the category of Low Moments in the New York Times, we have The Case of Who Plagiarized Whom?
    In Lynn Zinser's news story on the final round of the PGA Championship (Monday, Aug. 16) she writes the following about Phil Mickelson: "But on Sunday he finally got hot. He eagled the par-5 No. 5 early and then had birdies on three consecutive holes. He hit nice putts on Nos. 12 and 13 and hit his approach within two feet for birdie on No. 14. That put him at seven under. He stayed there until a wild ride on 18, which led to a bogey and a round of 67."
     Succinctly put. This was another article in this morning's NY Times, written by Thomas Kaplan, entitled On Par, under the subhead Mickelson Steadies Himself: "But on Sunday, he finally heated up. He eagled the par-5 No. 5 early, then had birdies on three consecutive holes. He hit nice putts on Nos. 12 and 13 and hit his approach within two feet for birdie on No. 14. That put him at seven under. He stayed there until a wild ride on 18, which led to a bogey and finished a round of 67."
       If it were not for two minor discrepancies ("got hot" by Zinser vs. "heated up" by Kaplan; and the word "finished" in the last sentence by Kaplan), the paragraphs would have been identical and I would have assumed it was some sort of computer screw up. But since those two descriptions of Mickelson's round were almost, but not exactly, the same, the hand of man is apparent. So who wrote it, and who copied it? I smell a nameless editor's hand in this foul till.
     Or maybe great minds think alike. Strange brewings in Kohler, for sure. All in all, an exciting PGA Championship that some of us would just as soon forget.

Vancouver 2010: Where I rank it, and why

2010-03-03T21:41:00.001-05:00

I get asked a lot which were my favorite Olympics and why. Its not an easy question to answer, because so many things go into it. Professionally, my favorite Olympics was the 1980 Games in Lake Placid, which were an organizational nightmare. The buses went on strike, so spectators had to trudge to an from the opening ceremonies, which were held a mile outside of town. Since it was snowing, it looked like the retreat of Napoleon's army in the Russian winter. Hotel and restaurant owners price-gouged to such an extent that it was easy to find a table at any restaurant in tiny Lake Placid. People left as quickly as they could after an event to friendlier environs. But I covered all six of the U.S. gold medals--five by Eric Heiden, and that very special one by the U.S. Olympic hockey team--so it was a wonderful Olympics for me, personally. But I still rank Lake Placid at the bottom of my list.
       So, Vancouver.
      First, the competition.
       It couldn't have ended better, with the overtime goal by Sidney Crosby, Canada's biggest active sports star, putting an exclamation point on the Games, as if it had all been scripted. The men's hockey gold was Canada's 14th, the most by any country. The U.S. had the most medals, 37, and Germany was next with 30. But Canada was able to trumpet that they had "owned the podium" after all, by virtue of winning the most gold medals of any country in any Winter Olympics. Though by the formula that I suggested in my last post, awarding 3 pts for a gold, 2 for a silver, 1 for bronze, the U.S. still finished on top:
              United States       9 gold     15 silver    13 bronze = 70 pts.
               Germany           10 gold     13 silver      7 bronze = 63 pts.
               Canada              14 gold       7 silver      5 bronze = 61 pts.
       So both North American countries had a great Games. But I would submit that as the nationalistic fervor gripped Canada in the final week, as the gold medals started to accumulate, the tenor of the cheering changed from enthusiastic and supportive to rabid and edgy. Many, many Canadians have told me that if the U.S. had scored the overtime goal, instead of Canada, it would have ruined the Olympics for the host nation and left a bitter taste in their mouths. That is not the Olympic spirit. Nor is the goal of "owning the podium" and resorting to restricting access to facilities by foreign teams who wanted to train on the new bobsled, luge, skeleton and speedskating tracks.
        Let me add the nationalistic chest thumping did not start with Canada. But we're not used to seeing it from our neighbors to the north. The Americans are the very worst perpetrators (U!S!A! U!S!A! U!S!A!) and I'm certain that four years from now, Mother Russia will also want to prove its greatness by piggybacking on its athletes, as the Soviet Union used to. And who was the first to use the Olympics, founded as a "friendly competition between nations", for propaganda purposes? Nazi Germany, which hosted both the Summer and Winter Games in 1936.
        Look, I'm not comparing Canada (or the U.S. or Russia) with Nazi Germany. The Canadian athletes who finished off the podium did so with grace. But for a nation that likes to consider itself humble and understated, the Vancouver Games took them into uncharted territory.   It's why I've always loved the Sarajevo Olympics. I believe Yugoslavia won one silver medal in those1984 Games. They had been isolated behind the Iron Curtain for so long, they were just thrilled to be host to the sporting world, and they cheered every medal as their own. They were the best hosts ever.

The Stars Were the Stars

      From Lindsey Vonn, shown here with some random old fart who is way too pleased with himself, to Shawn White, to Bode Miller, to Apollo Ono, to Sid Crosby, to Kim Yu-Na, the athletes we were familiar with rose to the occasion. That's a good thing. Upsets are fine in football, but in the Olympics, where for four years most of these athletes toil in obscurity, we need the Michael Phelps' of the world to perform up to the hype. Or it's just hype. They did that here.

The Organizing Committee Got Its Act Together
    My colleague, S.L. Price, called it the greatest comeback in Olympic history. And it was done by Vanoc, the Vancouver Organizing committee. The first week was beset with problems, great and small. The death of the Georgian luger. The breakdown of ice cleaning machines at the speedskating oval. Street protests. Anger that the Olympic torch was behind a cyclone fence. Grandstand tickets that were sold and then invalidated. Fans injured at an outdoor concert when a barrier collapsed.
       The last two weeks were rife with solutions. Those things that could be fixed, were fixed, and new problems didn't arise. There were no lapses in security. Buses ran on time. Police controlled crowds without dampening enthusiasm. Vancouver was a fun, safe place to be.

The Weather--yuck

The weather wasn't just an aesthetic problem. It severely affected the alpine competition, especially the slalom and the ski cross events, which were held in pea soup fog and driving rain. About half the slalom racers skied off the course. Four years, and then your fate is determined by whether you ski during a break in the fog or not. As for the city, where I was the entire time, except for four or five days in the middle, which were lovely, it rained every day. Not driving rainstorms. Just a steady, spitting drizzle. Bad luck? Maybe. But it all goes into the mix when it comes to ranking your favorite Olympics.

The Crowds--Unreal
       They just kept showing up, milling around the streets, clogging the sidewalks, wearing their Team Canada jerseys (they're called sweaters here), their funny hats, their facepaint. Cheering Ca-na-da! till they were hoarse. Watching the hockey games through tavern windows while standing in the rain. It was all about being there, sharing the experience. They didn't need tickets to feel part of these Olympics. Walking to the press center Sunday morning, where I would catch a bus to the gold medal hockey game, I passed three bars that had lines to get in that stretched around the corner. It was 9:20 a.m., and, since it was Sunday, the bars didn't open till 11 am. They waited without complaint, surrounded by like-minded Canadians who would remember Sidney Crosby's goal the rest of their lives. I'm glad I didn't have to see how they'd have behaved if the U.S. had won that game, but as it was, they were just giddy, proud, happy, thrilled fans who brought an energy to these Games the likes of which I had never seen.

So here it is: My Favorite Winter Olympics

1) Sarajevo, 1984-- Heavy snow. Heavy smoke in loud, hot bars filled with burly locals who tried to make you understand their native tongue. A population so appreciative to have contact with the outside world, you had the feeling they'd have done anything for you.

2) Lillehammer, 1994--Cold, clear air. Fresh white powder. Grandmothers who did their shopping from sleds. Small. Old fashioned. The only taint? Tonya Harding was there, too.

3) Vancouver, 2010

4) Calgary, 1988--What I remember best is the figure skating. Brian Boitano, Katarina Witt, and Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov all won gold medals; I wrote about them all; and I was hooked. Snow early, then a warm snap as a chinook blew in. Canadian friendly.

5) Albertville, 1992--A wonderful opening ceremonies, very French. Wonderful food, of course. Managed to get a couple of days of skiing in Meribel during the Games. Kristi Yamaguchi won the gold medal; and Paul Wylie won his silver. Both great stories to tell, especially Wylie's. (He was 27). Too spread out, however. Which is now the trend.

6) Salt Lake City, 2002-- They did a great job, after a very rough start. (Remember the scandal about bribing IOC officials). As good a combination of mountains and proximity to a city as any Winter Games site ever, and the weather was perfect. Only problem was, well, it was Salt Lake City.

7) Torino, 2006--Another site where the city and the mountains were just too far apart, a couple of hours by bus. Rain in the city, snow in the mountains. The food was, again, fantastic--it was Italy, right? But the Italians didn't embrace the Games as the Vancouverites did.

8) Nagano, 1998--This is mostly a personal thing that I can't even explain. The Japanese did a great job with these Games, and the people could not have been more hospitable. But there was no place I found to gather with my colleagues at night, and the hotel room was small and the bed hard. The hotel elevator gave me a chuckle, though. The floors were inscribed in the brass plate as follows: 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Robby.     I swear.

9) Lake Placid, 1980. My first. I shared a bedroom in our condo with SI Editor Bob Ottum, who became a great friend and mentor.   He and Willaim Oscar Johnson, our skiing writer, would write at the kitchen table with their manual typewriters, Ottum with a bottle of vodka in front of him, Johnson with a bottle of bourbon. It was an eyeopener for me, I'll tell you. And a good one. Real pros. I miss them. I miss the camaraderie we shared in that small condo. It gave me my love of the Olympic Games, which has yet to diminish.

The Medal Count

2010-02-27T13:55:00.006-05:00

The Olympic Games is not supposed to be about medal counts. But it always has been and it always will be, so they might as well get it right. Every paper you open, and even the official Vancouver media website, has a table like this one from this morning keeping track of the medal.

Country Gold Silver Bronze Total

United States	8	13	13	34
Germany	9	11	7	27
Canada	10	7	4	21
Norway	8	6	6	20
Austria	4	5	6	15
Russia	3	5	7	15
South Korea	6	6	2	14
China	5	2	4	11
France	2	3	5	10
Sweden	5	2	2	9

My problem with this table is the Total. They are assigning the same value to a bronze medal as to a silver medal, and the same to a silver as to a gold. But as we all know, and as anyone who saw the U.S. women's hockey team in tears after they received their silver medal, while the Canadians were loutishly drinking beer and smoking cigars on the ice after getting their golds, all medals are not even close to being created equal.

Should Sweden, with five golds, two silvers, and two bronzes, really be listed behind France, with only two golds, three silvers, and five bronzes?
I'm told Olympic historian David Wallechinsky tracks who wins the medal race at the Olympics by listing them by gold medals accumulated, using silvers and bronzes as tiebreakers. But that's equally non-sensical. Canada's Joannie Rochette's bronze medal in figure skating was nearly as sweet as any gold. Tiebreaker? I don't think so.

      The solution? A points system.
       What, then, is a gold medal worth, relative to a silver, relative to a bronze?
       Is one gold worth two silvers? And one silver worth two bronzes? If so, then it should be 4 pts. per gold, 2 per silver, 1 per bronze. Then the current medal standings would look like this:

    Country             Gold          Silver     Bronze       Total

United States	8	13	13	71
Germany	9	11	7	65
Canada	10	7	4	58
Norway	8	6	6	50
Austria	4	5	6	32
Russia	3	5	7	27
South Korea	6	6	2	38
China	5	2	4	28
France	2	3	5	19
Sweden	5	2	2	26

    South Korea would move ahead of Austria and Russia in the medal standings, China would pass Russia, and Sweden would move ahead of France. All three of these changes would more accurately reflect their performances.   The top four countries wouldn't change their order under the 4, 2, 1 system.
        But is one gold really worth four bronzes? Would an athlete rather have two silver medals, or one gold?
      It's a fair question. I happen to think two silvers trumps one gold, and an athlete with three bronze medals can look a single gold medalist in the eye as an equal. Hence a simple 3, 2, 1 system would be my preference. That would mean the medal count would look like this:

Country             Gold          Silver     Bronze       Total

United States	8	13	13	63
Germany	9	11	7	56
Canada	10	7	4	48
Norway	8	6	6	42
Austria	4	5	6	28
Russia	3	5	7	26
South Korea	6	6	2	32
China	5	2	4	23
France	2	3	5	17
Sweden	5	2	2	21

By this formula, South Korea again moves up two places, into 5th place overall, and Sweden again passes France. But China remains in 8th place, and the top four places, again, don't change. Easy to understand, simple to compute, and more accurately representative of the athlete's accomplishments. As easy as 1, 2, 3.

Hottest Olympians; hottest hockey tournament

2010-02-25T15:28:00.000-05:00

In my first two Olympic Games, 1980 and 1984, I covered hockey and, to a lesser extent, speedskating.
Then I switched to figure skating, and I've never looked back. People ask me all the time if I miss covering hockey. I really don't. That may have something to do with the fact that two of the gold medalists from the Calgary figure skating competition, Katarina Witt and Ekaterina Gordeeva, were among the most beautiful women in Winter Olympic history. That took some of the edge off having to deal with the weird politics of the sport.
Consensus is that here in Vancouver, there's an unusually large contingent of beautiful Olympians, many of them medalists. Lindsay Vonn (right), who has a gold and a bronze, is in many ways the face of these Vancouver Games for America. But she has company when it comes to hotties on the podium. I'm guessing, because few of them are American, NBC has ignored these ladies. More's the pity. One more reason to follow this blog.

Meet Torah Bright, gold medal, halfpipe. Australia

Say hello to Tina Maze, Slovenian silver medalist, Super G:

Ashleigh McIvor, Canadian Gold Medalist, Skicross

Curling created a bit of a stir in these games when a topless photo of the Danish skip, Madeleine Dupont, started circulating on the internet, courtesy of the website Deadspin. The offending photo was soon taken down, but not before Dupont had been heckled to tears during her match against the Canadians.

But the most beautiful curler is 43-year-old Cheryl Bernard, the skip from Canada, who will win either the gold or silver medal. Her eyes could burn a hole into the granite rock she slides.

As usual, figure skating has more than its share of lovely athletes. Tanith Belbin, who finished fourth in ice dancing after winning silver four years ago in Torino, makes anyone's list of beautiful Olympians.

But the loveliest lady on the ice? She skates tonight: Kiira Korpi of Finland. Who needs a triple axel when you look like this?

Okay, enough eye candy. They're athletes, too, right? Remember that. An extraordinary group.

Briefly, then, a word about the hockey tournament, which, however it turns out, will go down as one of the most interesting, most competitive in Olympic history. Among the upsets and near upsets? Switzerland, the surprise team of the tournament, lost in a shootout to Canada, won its first playoff game over Belarus, then gave the U.S. all it could handle in a 2-0 loss, the second tally into an open net. Second biggest surprise? Probably Slovakia, which beat Russia in the preliminary round, 2-1, then knocked off defending champion Sweden, 4-3, to get the semifinals. Near upsets? Little Latvia only lost to the Czech Republic in the playoffs, 3-2. And Norway gave Slovakia a scare in the first round, falling 4-3. Every team but Germany was competitive in every game in the men's draw. Parity has arrived in the men's game.

Not true, of course, in the women's game, where the U.S. and Canada, driven by their own fierce rivalry, have further separated themselves from the rest of the world, leading some to speculate that women's hockey might be tossed from the Olympics until the rest of the world catches up. Well, you can relax on that score. Women's hockey is secure. The rest of the world will, eventually, close the gap, as more and more Swedes, Finns, etc. come to North America to play college hockey. In the short term, we should just marvel at the skills being exhibited by the women players in North America. I'm looking forward to today's women's final between the US and Canada as much as I am to the gold medal game for the men.

My predictions for the women:

U.S.: Gold

Canada: Silver

Finland: Bronze

Men:

Canada: Gold

US: Silver

Slovakia: Bronze

Mid-term Report Card

2010-02-22T12:44:00.000-05:00

We're a little more than halfway through these 2010 Olympics, so I thought it would be a good time to hand out the midterm grades.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
B-
Obviously its a huge undertaking putting on an Olympics, and things are going to go wrong. Well, they have. The transportation system has generally worked well, but early in the games there were reports of long waits for buses in the rain. After selling Grandstand admission tickets to the moguls competition, organizers decided not to honor them--they did give refunds--ostensibly because of safety concerns, but probably, according to those who were there, because of inadequate infrastructure at the mountain. The food kiosks, bathrooms, and footpaths were so crowded that those with seated tickets complained. So they cancelled Grandstand seating, disappointing thousands.
Then there is the continuing saga of the hideous fencing around the Olympic flame, which I wrote about earlier. Organizers have now removed the lower four feet of the cyclone fence and replaced it with custom-made Plexiglas. (This has been an expensive mistake.) Better for pictures, no question. But still an ugly fence around the flame.
Early on, the ice resurfacing machines at the speed skating oval broke down, delaying the competition and requiring two zambonis to be driven to Vancouver from Calgary as replacements. Now some of the speedskaters are complaining the the surface of the brand new oval is "sticky."

And there have been injuries which could have been prevented, to both spectators and athletes. A dozen or so outdoor concertgoers were taken to the hospital when a barrier in front of a stage collapsed. Cross country skier Petra Majdic of Slovenia was badly hurt during a training room when she overshot an icy, 180 degree turn and fell ten feet into an unprotected rock-filled gully. And most tragically, of course, was the luge competitor from Georgia who was killed during a training run, a death that might have been prevented had the walls of the dangerous turn been higher and the steel column he crashed into been padded.
All in all, it's a list of problems a little bit longer and more serious than one usually encounters at an Olympics, and quite a bit longer than the most recent Games in Beijing, where everything worked and everyone behaved. That said, people are having a lot more fun here, and the organizers, in every instance, have made adjustments after the fact to help rectify the problems. They have been feeling the heat.

COMPETITION:
A
I can't remember an Olympics when I wouldn't have awarded the competition an A. The athletes are beyond comparison when it comes to dedication, humility, courage, and desire. Watching the cross country skiers and biathletes collapse as they cross the finish line, paralyzed with exhaustion, never gets old. (I'm guessing NBC almost never shows those sports, since Americans never win them. It's too bad. One of many, many problems I have with NBC's coverage.) No better example than that of the aforementioned Slovenian cross country star, Ms. Jajdic. Having suffered four broken ribs and a collapsed lung from her fall into the rocks while training, she came back and won the bonze medal in the individual classic sprint. She was in such pain afterward she had to be helped onto the podium during the medal ceremony, unable to climb up the step without assistance.

Led by the amazing U.S. alpine team (2 golds, 2 silver, 3 bronze), which has six more alpine medals to date than any other country, the U.S. has been the surprise team of these Olympics. As of Sunday night Americans had accumulated 24 medals (7 gold, 7 silver, 10 bronze), eight more than second place Germany. So far, they have done so with unusual grace and civility--Bode Miller (above) has been a paragon of good behavior, and Lindsay Vonn (below) has been...has been...let's just call her a great ambassador for America.

       The next most surprising team? The South Korean speedskaters, both short track and long. They have collected a total of four golds, four silver, and one bronze, easily the most of any country in speedskating, which was once ruled by the Dutch and the Germans. South Korea will probably add one more gold in women's figure skating, where the favorite is Yuna Kim.
     The most disappointed countries in terms of performance? Certainly the host country, Canada, which is tied with South Korea for 4th overall with just 9 medals. That wouldn't be so bad except Canadian sports officials had made a huge campaign promising the country they would "own the podium", stating repeatedly that their goal was to win more medals than any other country. They also pushed the bounds of sportsmanship by severely restricting access by other countries to Vancouver's facilities for training--a policy that, critics say, contributed to the death of the Georgian luger. Certainly, there are more medals coming their way. Ice dancing looks like s good bet for gold tonight. Hockey and curling remain to be determined, though Canada's men's hockey team has disappointed to date. Still, officials have conceded they are not going to be winning the medal count.
       It's also been a weak showing for Russia, which is hosting the next Winter Games. Traditionally a Winter Olympic power, they have only seven medals to date, two of them gold.

ATMOSPHERE:
   B+

The main reason Vancouver doesn't rate an A in atmosphere is the weather, which, when it hasn't been raining, has been springlike. Trees are literally in full flower downtown, daffodils are blooming, and people are roaming the streets wearing shirtsleeves. Doesn't feel like a Winter Games.

That has brought out the crowds, and that has led to a carnival atmosphere on the downtown streets. It has also led to plenty of arrests for drunken revelry and a few barroom brawls. Hockey crowds, especially, have an edge to them that is slightly worrisome. (I spoke to a number of people who were worried about walking home last night after the U.S. beat Canada in hockey.)   Last night as I was leaving the press center a raccoon darted across a crowded street and into a hedge. I was going its way, as it happened. A young man in a funny hat, plenty well-oiled, took off after the raccoon. "I'm a raccoon catcher," he bellowed. Then, to me, "Where did he go?" I shrugged, nodding toward the hedge. Suddenly the raccoon appeared ahead of us, on a low wall, obviously wondering whether to make a break for it. "There he is," the young guy said, slowing.
   "I wouldn't try to pick him up," I warned him. "He'll bite you."
   "I'm not going to pick him up," the raccoon catcher said. "I'm going to kick him."
Of course you are, I thought. Why wouldn't you? Canada lost a hockey game, so you kick a raccoon. Brilliant. Fortunately, the raccoon disappeared.

Bottom line is the people of B.C. are loving their day in the sun, donning their Canadian sweaters, painting their faces, and generally reveling till all hours of the night, every night. So far the hosers have been mostly guilty of belting out some very bad renditions of Oh, Canada! at the top of their lungs on the street. It's so much more festive than it was in Torino four years ago, where it was as

if the local populace was intent on showing itself too cool to embrace a sporting event like the Olympics. Empty seats could be found at many events in Italy. Not so, here. Canada loves its winter sports, and it shows. Even compulsory ice dance was a sellout.

TV COVERAGE:
Incomplete
I'm the worst person to try to give a grade about the television coverage you're getting, since I'm watching the Games in Canada. They're doing a great job. From everything I hear, though, NBC is still delaying the coverage of too many of the marquis events, packaging them for prime time rather than showing them live, and--this I hear over and over--showing way too much of Bob Costas. Someone asked me if he had it in his contract he had to be shown a certain number of minutes every hour. His ego's that big, but I doubt his agent's that good.
No, Dick Ebersol, the man who does NBC's Olympic programming, just doesn't trust the athletes to be enough. To him, the Olympics is entertainment, not sports. So he trots out Costas, Steven Colbert, Al Michaels...who else? I don't watch. Rather than show the athletes from all nations competing. Here in Canada, as in most countries, the television host ushers the viewer from one sport to the next, briefly setting the scene, laying the backdrop, then introducing the announcers at the venue before disappearing for the next hour or two. At NBC, the host (Costas) doesn't usher. He is like the guest who won't leave after dinner, pontificating, carrying on, laughing too loud and staying too long. Sports? Why rush off to watch sports? He knows the outcome, after all. It's been taped.

But I'm curious what you think. Post a message below about NBC's coverage, and the grade you'd give them. You may have to register to do so, but only once. It won't take long. Inquiring minds want to know.

Calling the Olympic Fig Fashion Police

2010-02-20T07:36:00.000-05:00

I call it The Johnny Weir effect. No matter how weirdly, flamboyantly, or flamingly I dress when I skate, Johnny Weir will be pinker, prissier, and prettier. So anything goes.

When I first started covering figure skating in 1983, there was a growing movement against sequins on men. The sport was sensitive to the perception that it was not a place for manly men. It was a big deal when Scott Hamilton won the 1984 Gold medal in Sarajevo without a rhinestone to be seen, skating in his little page boy haircut and Superman outfit, less the cape. A lot of people thought he actually looked like an athlete...maybe a speedskater or gymnast something...instead of an action toy.

Fast forward to 2010, where taste has been thrown out the window, and skaters look more like preening peacocks of the stage than athletes. Here's a snapshot I took of the three medalists from the men's competition.
On the left, we have your silver medalist, Evgeni Plushenko, who is actually a married man. He is wearing a red beaded vest as the centerpiece of his costume, I'm not sure why.

The music he skated to had nothing to do with him being a croupier in a Russian gambling parlor. To the far right, our bronze medalist, Japan's Daisuke Takahashi (yes, all nations are guilty of this trend) who was skating to La Strada. Hence he is dressed like a gypsy. Or--here's a concept--he could skate to the music of La Strada without actually pretending he's Anthony Quinn. La Strada could just be music to skate to. Do we really need another skating toreador every time Carmen is played at a figure skating event, which is about three times a night. Takahashi deserves extra credit for trying a quad while dressed like Fellini's fool. A case can be made, however, that he might actually have landed it without a frock of rags flapping around his face.
In the center, of course, stands our champion, Evan Lysacek, from Naperville, Illinois. Here's a better picture of his costume, which, for some reason, involves two snakes encircling his neck.

His music is called Scheherazade, who was the wife of an Arabian king. Scheherazade told the king a story every night for 1001 nights so he wouldn't behead her, as he'd done all his other wives. (You see what watching compulsory ice dancing will do to you...that's what I'm doing now...when I'm not searching Wikapedia for the meaning of Scheherazade...and if I hear one more tango romantica I'm going behead someone with a toepick.) In the synopsis of the story, I could find no mention of snakes, however. So I don't know what they're doing there around Lysacek's neck. I suppose Vera Wang does. That's who designed Lysacek's outfits, and he's proud of it, too.
Lysacek, it should be noted, is the macho skater on the U.S. team.
Can't we just skate without being characters in the Star Wars bar scene? These are only the medalists. There were far worse. Take that crazy Belgian, Kevin Van der Perran. He skated as a skeleton in his short program, then topped that by skating as Robin Hood during his freeskate. Of course Robin of Sherwood wears a see-through black mesh shirt covered with leaves. Why wouldn't he? He hangs with Friar Tuck, right? I couldn't find a picture of that costume, but here was the outfit he chose for his short.

    Nothing says Olympic athlete! like a trick or treater on Halloween.
               The most creative costume was worn by an albino Swede (if that's not redundant), called Adrian Schultheiss. Adrian came to an Olympics and a Saturday Night Live skit broke out during his program, which was entitled Insane in the Brain. He actually skated in a straight jacket. Here he is getting into his Olympic uniform, which was not the same one that he marched in during Opening Ceremonies.

His music was as unusual as his costume, a medley of Teardrop, Insane in the Brain, and Smack My Bitch Up, which is what I'd like to do to Johnny Weir for leading us down this horrid path. There actually is such a thing as a costume deduction in figure skating, though what on earth you have to do to incur one is beyond me. And probably beyond the pale.
It's enough to make a man want to scream.

Free the Flame

2010-02-18T13:57:00.000-05:00

There have been a number of questionable decisions made by the organizers of these Vancouver Games, none more controversial than erecting a ten-foot high chain link fence around the perimeter of the plaza where the Olympic flame of peace burns eternal. Somehow seems to defeat the symbolism of the torch. Vancouverites were outraged to discover that they could not get photos of themselves in front of the torch, or even an unobstructed view of the torch itself, without it appearing they were viewing the flame from prison.
         Bowing to the criticism, the organizers come up with a solution that, as we used to say down at the corral, was neither slow, nor fast. It was half fast.
         They cut a hole in the fence.
         Yes, they also moved the perimeter of the fence in, bringing in cranes in the dead of night to relocate the huge concrete barriers to allow spectators a slightly closer view of the flame. But the fence is still there. So here's what it looks like now:

Isn't that special? Spectators can now stick their cameras through the slot in the fence and take a shot that is unimpeded by cyclone fencing, just as if we lived in a world that was sane so we didn't have to worry about--what? Someone blowing up the flame? Someone climbing up the flame to incinerate themselves?

Here's a thought. Why not just take down the fence, cordon off the flame with something tasteful, like a single heavy chain similar to say the one that surrounds the Washington Monument, and station a couple of mounties there 24/7? It would have to be cheaper than the money they've invested in building and then rebuilding the fence. And it would eliminate pathetic scenes such as this one, where proud Canadians line up three and four deep to take a snapshot of this powerful symbol of the friendly competitions between nations from behind a 10-foot barrier.

On a brighter note, the people of Canada (most of them, anyway) are totally vested in these Games. In Beijing, the Chinese were, too--there is nothing like an Olympics to wring out every drop of nationalism in a populace--but the difference between these Games and the ones held in Beijing are as different as, well, a free society and a controlled one. In Beijing, everything was managed; everything worked; the crowds were moved quickly and efficiently; and very few people laughed. Ever. In Vancouver, protests pop up at inopportune times; people mingle and linger; crowds are unruly; things break down or go awry; and everyone is shouting and laughing and bursting into song all the time. And they aren't all drunk, either.

A stroll last night down Granville St., which has been turned into a pedestrian way, was a visual feast, with street performers on every block, throngs of Canadians bedecked in bright red hockey jerseys, musicians, revelers, shoppers, all soaking up and adding to an atmosphere that was purely joyful.

Every storefront had some sort of Olympic display in the window. Every store had its merchandise interspersed with winter sports paraphernalia--used hockey skates, shinpads, skis, Canadian flags, giant mascots in chairlifts...

Roving bands of hosers wearing the sweaters of their favorite players were ringing cowbells and chanting Let's Go Canada! Let's Go Canada! as if Granville St. itself was hosting a hockey game. This is the upside of having an Olympics in a city where the temperature is in the 40s, even at night. People are out and about. The energy was terrific. The excitement genuine. The Olympic spirit had put a triple shot of oxygen in the air.

The Lighter of the Torch

2010-02-16T15:56:00.000-05:00

One of the fun things about the Olympics is you never know who you're going to bump into next. Joe Biden? Mike Eruzione? Peggy Fleming? Kristi Yamaguchi? They're all here, and, from varying distances, I'd seen them all. So last night I'd sent in my mini-web story from the pairs final, sent in another story, considerably longer, previewing the men's short program hustled to make the 10 o'clock bus from the figure skating venue to the press center, and hoofed it through the rain to the Hyatt, desperate for a Guinness. Made it by 10:45. Had no time for pleasantries. Put in my order, took a long first gulp, then settled back to watch replays of the downhill. Only problem was a guy was standing in my line of vision, getting an autograph. The man accommodating him was that old torch lighter himself, Wayne Gretzky.
I do not exaggerate when I say that Gretz and I go way back. When he was 16, I traveled to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario to do a story on him which eventually ran as Learned in all the Lore of Old Men. It was January, 1978. I was editor of Hockey Magazine, based in Connecticut, and this was my first assignment as a freelance writer for Sports Illustrated. Obviously, it meant a lot to me. Wayne was already a celebrity in Canada, a clear superstar in the making, the leading scorer in the Ontario Hockey League playing for the Soo Greyhounds. In a year he would turn pro. This would be the first story on him in a major media outlet in the States, and his first appearance in SI, a magazine he read every week. A lot of the World Hockey Association teams that were thinking of signing him were based in the States. So it meant a lot to him, too.
Neither of us ever forgot the week I spent following him around. The story was well received, Gretz ended up somehow exceeding the wildly high expectations that were placed on him, and I was hired as a staff writer by Sports Illustrated in March of 1978. For the first six or seven years, until I burnt out on it, I covered mostly hockey, and wrote a lot about Gretzky.

He was our Sportsman of the Year in 1982, a story I wrote, and he led the Edmonton Oilers to four Stanley Cups in five years. When he was traded to the LA Kings, I did that story, and when he signed with the Rangers so he could be reunited with Mark Messier, his old Oiler teammate, I did that story.

And when Gretz finally retired, in 1999, having broken just about every possible scoring record that could be broken along the way, I did that story, too.
   No matter how famous he got, he never forgot that first story when he was playing in The Soo and was just 16. That's the way he is. It had very little to do with me. Every media outlet in the world wanted to do a story on his retirement in 1999, and the Rangers arranged for a series of 10-minute interviews the day before his last game. I was on that docket, but when I walked in to grab my brief slot, Wayne said: "Swifty, this isn't the way we should do this."
     I said: "I know. But if I only have ten minutes, let's not waste it."
    "Can you come by the locker room tomorrow before the game? About 10 a.m.?"
    It was an afternoon game that would be televised all over North America. "I can, but if I can't get to you, I'm screwed."
     "I'll leave word with the locker room attendant," he said. "He'll let you in."
     When I showed up the next morning, at 10 on the dot, there must have been 200 journalists and TV people outside the Rangers locker room. I thought I'd been had, that we'd all been had. But I worked my way to the front and opened the door a crack. I gave the locker room attendant my name, and, to the amazement of my fellow sportswriters, he ushered me right in. The only other person in the room was Gretzky. He was signing sticks. He would use a different stick on every shift and later put them up for auction. I sat down and we talked for an hour.
       So. last night at the Hyatt bar, I left my Guinness on the table and went over to say hello. I guess the last time we'd talked was his rookie year coaching at Phoenix, four or five years ago. But he brightened noticeably and introduced me to everyone at the table as E.M. Swift, the guy who'd done a story on him when he was 16 years old. I told him his motorcade nearly ran me over when he was on his way to light the torch, and showed him the snapshot I'd taken of it. Then I asked if he was having fun. He told me he'd had to get up at 4 a.m. to do the Today Show after lighting the torch, after which he stayed signing autographs for an hour. But the only part he really objected to was having to take a cablecar to the top of the mountain, where the Today Show set was, in the dark. A James Bond scene, he said, had been filmed in that cablecar. "I'm afraid of heights," he said.
       "I remember." The first time I'd interviewed him was in an airplane, during a bumpy flight, and he was white-knuckled the entire time. Seriously scared.
        He told me he was coming to Boston on March 3, where he and Bobby Orr were doing a charity event there to benefit Ace Bailey's foundation, the former Bruins player who died in one of the flights that crashed on 9/11. He and Orr, two of the nicest, most generous men on the planet, had never done a charity event together before, and Wayne was looking forward to it. Then he told me about the interchange he and Orr had had during the rehearsal for Opening Ceremonies.

         Orr was one of the eight Canadian luminaries who carried the Olympic flag into the stadium during the Opening Ceremonies. When they were rehearsing the pageant the day before the Games began, Orr, who was laden with the credentials we all have to wear to get through security checkpoints, approached Gretzky to say hello. He noticed Gretzky, and only Gretzky, had nothing hanging around his neck--no credential, no photo i.d., no temporary pass, no nothing. "What the heck?" Orr said to him. "Where's your credentials?"
        Gretzky shook his head.
        "How'd you get in here?" Orr said, amazed.
        Gretzky smiled.
"Seriously," Orr said. "They could not just have let you through because they recognized you."
Gretzky shrugged. "Bobby, I scored 894 goals in the NHL." He paused for effect. "How many did you have?"
        Orr cracked up.
        Who else on the planet could put Bobby Orr in his place?

My Favorite Olympic Moment (so far)

2010-02-14T14:21:00.000-05:00

     This will be a short entry, but it speaks to the invisible bond that connects the Olympic family. I am an Olympic pin collector, but not a rabid one. These are a few of the ones I've collected already in Vancouver. Others work very hard at it, and there is a cult of Olympic pin collectors who go to every Olympics, Summer and Winter, and display their wares on folding tables, where they will trade their pins for yours. When I pass them on the sidewalks--and there are a number of them who have assembled near the Main Press center--I usually slow to see if there's anything interesting on display, because Sports Illustrated pins are generally good barter. Yesterday, as I was walking past, moving on, one of the pin collectors called after me: " Each thief passing by."
I took a couple more steps, trying to process what I had just heard, slowed, stopped, then spun around wide-eyed. The pin collector, a man about my age, was looking at me with a slightly expectant smile. I had no idea if I'd ever seen him before, but he clearly knew me, because "Each Thief Passing By" is the title of my first (and to date only) novel, published in 1981. It sold 4500 copies. It's been out of print for over 25 years. (Though you can buy used copies from dealers.)
       I approached the man. "Who are you? How do you know that book?" I asked, sticking out my hand.
      He introduced himself. "Mike Rose," he said. "1980, Lake Placid, you, me, Dave Silk and Dave Silk's sister sat at a table in the Holiday Inn and watched the replay of the U.S. beating the Russians."
        I remembered that night as if it were yesterday, though I have never written about it. The entire team was there.   The Miracle on Ice team of 1980 had beaten the Russians that afternoon, and ABC wasn't televising the game until that night on tape delay. So hours after the biggest hockey upset of all time, the team and a handful of friends gathered in the lounge of the Holiday Inn and watched it all unfold again. I remember the players giving each other grief about missed checks, short shifts, flubbed passes, and bad hair. I don't think anyone complimented anyone else the entire time. It was that sort of team. They were (and still are) a fun group. Totally, delightfully spontaneous. As Eruzione used to say, "We may be young, but we're immature."
       "It changed my life," Mike Rose continued. "I've been coming to Olympics ever since."
       "It changed a lot of people's lives," I said.   "What have you got to trade?"
       "Take anything you want."   I looked his collection over, and took an USA Olympic Hockey pin from his sweater in exchange for an SI pin.
        "I don't think I've ever heard anyone say 'Each Thief Passing By' to me on the street before," I said. "I almost fell over."
        "I saw you and thought, 'I know that guy,'" Mike said. "I figured if it was you that would get you to stop." Then he surprised me again. "Listen, I've got copies of Eleven Seconds and My Sergei with me," he said. "I always figured I might run into you at one of these. If I get them to the press center, will you sign them for me?"
        "It would be my pleasure."
        "Great. It was good seeing you again. it's been a long time."
         "Mike, right? Mike Rose. Stay dry, Mike."
          "You, too."
         My favorite Olympic moment so far.

Dateline: Vancouver--Opening Ceremonies

2010-02-13T18:17:00.004-05:00

This is my 9th Winter Olympics, and my 15th including the Summer Games, and while it's possible I'll be in London in 2012, let's operate under the assumption that this will be my last one. It's the one sporting event I've always loved to cover, the one that seems most to matter, the one that resonates in the larger scheme of human affairs. I think the Olympics really do make a difference in the way people of different cultures and nationalities view one another.
So I'm going to try to write about this one on Swift Kicks as often as possible. We'll see how that works out. I also will be writing for SI.com and Sports Illustrated, the (shrinking) magazine. Here, for example, is something on figure skating that I sent in this morning: Judging Controversy
But the stuff that makes the Games the Games, the funny, human, non-sports page stuff, I'll try to save for here, to give you a feel of what these 17 days in Vancouver are like for me.
I suspect they're going to be wet. Television is going to try to ignore the weather here in the city, but it's rained every day (4) I've been here so far, and it's expected to rain another 3 inches this weekend. In Whistler, where the skiing will be held, that will probably be snow and look wonderful. But here in Vancouver, 6 feet above sea level, snow is a distant memory. Walking to the press center from my hotel this morning, I noticed blossoms breaking out on a Japanese magnolia tree. On Feb. 13. I'd have taken pictures of it, but my camera was in my backpack and it was raining. So you'll have to take my word for it. That tree knows something the local organizing committee hid from the IOC. Spring comes in February in Vancouver.
It was out of concern for the rain that, for the first time in Olympic history, Opening Ceremonies were held indoors. It was in a huge, domed stadium that had been built in the hopes of luring a pro football team to come to Vancouver, and the floor of the immense stadium had been covered with an inch of white, shredded crepe paper in an effort, mostly successful, to replicate snow. Here's a shot of it falling from the top of the dome:

I hope it looked good on television, because in person it was kind of like being on a movie set, so different from, say, Lillehammer in 1994, when it snowed the lightest, finest powder imaginable during Opening Ceremonies and turned the Games into a visual wonderland that was capped the final night by an appearance of the Northern Lights, the likes of which I had ever seen. Vancouver tried to replicate the Northern Lights indoors last night, and it was actually quite compelling, replete with the hologram of a giant polar bear:

The marching in always takes too long, and this year was no exception, what with all those great Winter Olympic powers like Bermuda, Jamaica, Morocco and the Cayman Islands clogging up the works. Each has one or two athletes who probably live there to avoid paying taxes, one or two officials who get a free trip to the host city and lots of parties to attend, and about 50 yards of open space in front and behind them as they march. I think there should be a rule that any country that has no measurable snowfall during a given quadrennium should be ineligible for the Winter Games. Let the Games begin, and the marching end.
Anyway, the host country always comes in last, and here's a picture of Canada marching in past the phallic totem poles:

We all stood as they did so, beating the drums they'd given us in our little kit that included flashlights, a poncho, and a Canadian flag. The only other nation that got a standing ovation was Georgia, out of respect for the 21-year-old luger who, earlier in the day, had died in a training run.

It was, on balance, a very imaginative, colorful, and long Opening Ceremonies, the low point being the street-corner-caliber poet who stood high on a stanchion and beat his Canadian breast, trying to capture a nation's psyche in free verse while wearing a beret and an Amish beard. He managed, against all odds, to unite this huge, diverse country: by the time he had finished, not one person in Canada identified with him.
I was obligingly wearing my baby blue poncho from my kit, which was hot, and after four-plus hours in my seat, they still hadn't managed to produce the torch. I ran out of gas. So after KD Lang's beautiful rendition of "Hallelujah", I left. I knew it was Gretzky who would be lighting the torch, and was sorry to miss him (when he was sixteen, he was my first assigned story for Sports Illustrated, and during the course of his record-shattering career, I wrote about him often) but I also knew I could tune in later and watch the replay. I headed out into the rain.
The roads, unexpectedly, were blocked off as I walked down Georgia St., back toward the press center. After a few minutes of spashing through puddles while getting my bearings, I heard sirens behind me and was aware of people scrambling to the side of the road. I looked back, and there was Gretzky, standing in an open car, carrying the torch, en route to the huge Olympic cauldron downtown, which he would light. About a thousand excited, inebriated Canadian youths were pursuing his vehicle on foot. I managed to get this snapshot as he rode past. I know it's lousy, but, hey, it was raining and it was a snapshot. But trust me, it's Gretzky on the way to lighting the Olympic torch:

Very cool moment. They'll be more, and I'll try to share them.

Super Bowl Crow and Conroy Gumbo!!

2010-02-08T10:10:00.013-05:00

For those of you keeping score at home, I missed every way possible in my Super Bowl predictions. 1) The Colts did not win and cover the 5 1/2 pt. spread. 2) The teams did not combine to score more than 55 1/2 pts. 3) Reggie Bush did not run wild 4) The Saints defense was not picked apart and 5) Peyton Manning did not run up the score. Those were the only predictions I made, so it was a clean sweep. Fortunately, the chili was a success; and I don't bet on sports events. Now you know why. Younger brother Lock also knows why, which is why he went to Las Vegas, bet the opposite of all my predictions and won. What happened later at the tables is anyone's guess, but he'd already had a good week, getting out of Washington DC before the snowstorm hit, and then learning that his eldest daughter Katie had become engaged to a wonderful guy.
So he was playing with house money.
As for the game, it should do two things: 1) Stop the coronation of Peyton Manning as the best quarterback of all time. 2) Elevate Drew Brees to superstar status.
Manning is a great, great quarterback. But with only one Super Bowl title, he has a history of problems winning the big one. I think he was hamstrung in this game because of cautious play calling. But it's my understanding Manning has free rein to audible in any situation, so he has to take some responsibility for the Colts' conservative attack. Manning also had trouble finding his rhythm, because after a poor first quarter, Brees kept the Saints' offense on the field most of the remainder of the game--the Colts had only six offensive snaps in the second quarter--marching his team up and down with short, accurate passes and no turnovers. Brees was 32 of 39 passes for 288 yards, and one of those incompletions was a cold whiff by a receiver that let the ball hit him in the facemask. The recovery of the onside kick to start the second half was a huge momentum-changer, but it was Brees who took advantage of the coaching gamble by taking the Saints in for the go-ahead touchdown. After falling behind 10-0, New Orleans outscored the Colts 31-7 the rest of the way. There was no question which team deserved to win.
As for the Super Bowl spectacle: I give it a D-. The Who? Really? From which crypt did the NFL exhume them? Is everyone in that league tone deaf? And completely devoid of common sense? The last time we heard from Pete Townshend was in 2003 when he was arrested in England for having child pornography on his computer. He's a world class creep. Thanks, NFL, for sharing.
And don't get me started on the ads. What was with all the men without pants And beavers? The only one worth its millions was the Letterman, Oprah, Leno bit on the couch, and it only ran for 15 seconds.

Now to the real point of this entry. I fibbed a little. I don't bet money on sports events. But sometimes I do bet things. And childhood classmate Betsy Claggett Smith extracted a promise from me to share my favorite gumbo recipe if the Saints should happen to win. This one comes straight from Pat Conroy's cookbook, which is well worth buying for both its amusing anecdotes and its fine regional recipes. Conroy lives in Beaufort, South Carolina, the Low Country where Forrest Gump was filmed, and where several of Conroy's novels are set. It is also just 20 minutes from Spring Island, where we have a home. Conroy serves this dish at Super Bowl parties, and next year I think I might do the same. It serves 8.

1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup flour
1 whole chicken
1 large onion, peeled and quartered
1 cup celery, diced, plus the leafy tops of a bunch of celery
1 bay leaf
2 tbls. sea salt
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup diced green pepper
1 cup diced red onion
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 tsp. freshly ground pepper
3/4 tsp. gumbo file
3/4 tsp. dried thyme
6 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 lb. coarsely chopped bacon
1 lb. smoked andouille sausage, cut into 1/4 inch slices
1 16-ounce can tomato puree
1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined.

Get all the ingredients ready first. This is the perfect activity for the day of the Super Bowl. Then it goes quickly:
1) Place oil and flour in a small saucepan over medium heat and whisk constantly until mixture turns a dark caramel color and smells like toasted almonds. (15 mins.) This is the roux. Transfer to a small bowl and let cool to room temperature. When cool, drain the excess oil.
2) While roux is cooling, place chicken, onion, celery tops and bay leaf in a large stockpot. Cover chicken with water, add the salt,and bring to boil over medium high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer until the chicken in tender, about 60 minutes. Remove the chicken and let it cool. Strain the stock and reserve. (You'll need 4 1/2 cups). When chicken is cool enough to handle, strip meat from the bones and shred into bite-sized pieces.
3) Wipe out the stockpot and return it to medium high heat. Warm the olive oil, and add the green pepper, diced celery and red onion. Cook, stirring occasionally, 12-15 minutes. Combine the red and black pepper, the gumbo file, and the thyme together in a small bowl and sprinkle evenly over the veggie mixture. Cook, stirring contantly, until veggies are well coated, about 8 mins. Mix in the garlic and cook another 3 mins.
4) Heat the stock in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk 1/4 cup of the stock into the roux until it forms a smooth paste. Add it to the stockpot along with the shredded chicken and remaining stock, stirring to combine. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer one hour, stirring occasionally.
5) While the gumbo is simmering, cook the bacon in a heavy skillet until crisp, 5-8 mins. Add the andouille sausage and stir to coat with bacon drippings. Reserve.
6) After the gumbo has simmered one hour, add the tomato puree and bacon, bacon drippings, and sausage mixture. Take 1 cup of the hot gumbo liquid out and deglaze the bacon pan. Add these pan juices to the gumbo and continue simmering until the gumbo is slightly thickened, about 30 mins.
7) Stir in the shrimp, cooking only until the shrimp is pink, about 10 mins.
8) Serve over bowls of rice, with your favorite beer, or an Alsatian riesling or gewurztraminer.

Super Bowl picks and the best chili ever

2010-02-02T13:37:00.013-05:00

I like chili anytime, but the only time I insist upon it is during the Super Bowl. It just fits the occasion. Have a bowl, have a beer, watch the game, watch the ads, go back for more at halftime. Little cornbread and Breakwind Farm honey. Umm. Bring it on. There's about a thousand different chili recipes, most of them good, but this one is the best I've found, and not too difficult to make. It's always better to cook it the day before then reheat it the day of the game. Gives the flavors a chance to meld.
But first, my predictions. It's going to be one of the more entertaining Super Bowls, I think, featuring the top teams in each conference and the two best passers in football in Peyton Manning and Drew Brees.

The Saints' Reggie Bush is going to have a big game, I believe, but the Saints' defense is going to be horribly shredded. The Colts are favored by five points, and if it plays out the way I expect it, I think Indy will win by a lot more than that. So, if you're inclined to bet, give the points, take the Colts, and bet the over, which is 56 1/2 points as of Tuesday. I think this game could easily be 42-28 or so. Manning's got to prove he can win the big one--he has only one Super Bowl win in his otherwise stellar career--and I think he'll want to run it up. It will be a fun game, but not necessarily a close one.
And if you want a reason to cheer for Peyton, the man who has everything, over Drew, the man who brought pride back to the city of New Orleans, check out this video, one of the funniest things I've ever run across from a pro athlete.

Now for the chili recipe. This serves 6-8, so adjust accordingly for a mob.

3 tbls. olive oil.
1 large onion, chopped.
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tbls. chopped fresh cilantro
2 lbs. beef bottom round or chuck, cut into 1/2" cubes. (Or lean burger).
2 tsp. chili powder
2 tsp. paprika
2 tsp. ground cumin;
1 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. unsweetened cocoa
2 15 ounce cans of pinto or kidney beans
1 28 ounce can diced tomatoes
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 3/4 cups beef stock
1 tbl. sugar

Heat oil in a dutch oven. Saute onion, garlic and cilantro, 5 mins over medium heat. Add meat and brown. Add spices and cook 5 mins., stirring occasionally. Add tomatoes, tomato paste, broth, and beans (drained). Bring to a boil. Simmer uncovered until desired thickness, then put the lid on and continue cooking until meat is tender, about 1 1/2 hrs. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve with garnishes of grated cheese, sliced scallions, fresh cilantro and sour cream on the side.

The cinnamon softens the cumin and chili spices, and the unsweetened cocoa (You can also use a chunk of dark chocolate) cuts the acidity of the tomatoes. You can also add a paste made from 1 tsp. flour, 1 tsp. cornmeal, and 1 tsp. warm water to further meld the flavors, though storing the chili in the fridge overnight accomplishes the same thing. Serve with fresh cornbread and your favorite beer, the darker the better!
This is making me hungry.

George Washington's Eggnog Recipe (and a cure for our tax woes)

2009-12-22T17:16:00.007-05:00

File this post under: a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.
I'm going to address the tax problem first. Stay with me here, faithful readers, it won't take long. This came to me in a flash when I heard the U.S. Postal Service is going to lose $8 billion dollars this year. So here's a solution.
Put a 1 cent tax on emails.
Every email. Every bit of spam. It will cost a penny. It will cost you, and more importantly, it will cost Williams-Sonoma, Orvis, Cabelas, 1-800-Flowers, Jos. A. Banks, and all the rest of the retailers and health insurance providers and discount Viagra peddlers who clutter up our email boxes a penny every time they send you and the tens of thousands other customers an email. Will they continue to clutter up our email boxes? Probably. But at least we'll know they will be paying a small token for the privilege. Same with all the folks (like me) who send out mass emails and forward jokes and YouTube videos to all their pals...now it will cost us. Not much. But just enough to make us think: is this really worth it? Is it necessary? Maybe it is, and maybe it's not. But if it's true, as has been estimated, that in the U.S. alone there are 100 billion emails a day, a penny surcharge would raise $365 billion a year. Almost enough to pay for the new health care bill!! More than enough to make up for the postal service deficit.

That's the medicine. Herewith the spoonful of sugar.
This is the best eggnog recipe I have ever found, and it comes from none other than George Washington. Get right to it, folks. It should sit for 3 or 4 days so the flavors can meld.

1 quart cream
1 quart whole milk
1 dozen eggs
1 dozen tablespoons sugar
1 pint brandy
1/2 pint rye whiskey (Canadian)
1/4 pint dry sherry
1/4 pint dark rum

Mix the liquors in a bowl and set aside. Separate the eggs into yolks and whites. Set the whites aside. Add the sugar to the beaten yolks and mix well. Slowly add the combined liquors to the yolks, mixing as you do so. Then slowly add the milk and cream, mixing well.
Now beat the whites until frothy and beginning to become stiff. Fold the whites into the mixture. Set for several days in a cool place. Add sprinkling of nutmeg when ready to serve.
It really needs to percolate for a few days so the flavors mesh and soften, and it will then keep in a refrigerator for at least another week, perhaps more. Mine is never around that long. The key to this recipe is it is not too sweet. Dangerously delicious.
One word of caution. One year I set the eggnog to meld in my screened porch. When I went to sample it after a couple of days, I found a dead (but happy) mouse in the concoction. So cover it with Saran Wrap if you don't have room in the fridge.
Cheers, gang! And Merry Christmas!

Forgotten Miracle

2009-12-09T11:59:00.035-05:00

If you're looking for a Christmas present for the hockey fan in your house, or simply want to get hold of a terrific documentary, order "Forgotten Miracle", a just-released DVD that revisits the U.S. Olympic hockey team's 1960 gold medal win in Squaw Valley. (Here's the website: Forgotten Miracle. For the flavor of the film, click on the trailer when you get there. If it doesn't grab you, you don't have a pulse. If it does, click on the Buy DVD link. Best $19.95 you'll ever spend.)

Those of you who have checked out the trailer have already discovered that I was one of the ones interviewed for the film. (And no, I have no financial stake in the DVD sales.) I was eight years old when the 1960 team triumphed in Squaw Valley, so it's a little surprising I come across as such a know-it-all. But I've actually written a couple of stories on that 1960 team for Sports Illustrated, have interviewed its two best players, Billy Cleary and John Mayasich, at length, and covered the 1980 "Miracle on Ice", where I became friends with Herb Brooks, the last man cut from that 1960 team. I also used to play hockey with two of Coach Jack Riley's sons on a team called the Bud Kings (mid-70s, Boston), and know from them how much pride Riley took in what that 1960 team accomplished. If you're interested, here's what I wrote in SI in a piece entitled The Original Miracle On Ice, which I hesitate to send you to because the SI Vault website spells Cleary's name "Geary" throughout the piece. Plus it's a reader's digest version of the events which transpired in Squaw Valley, which is far, far better told in the "Forgotten Miracle" movie.

A better story, I think, is the short profile I did of Mayasich, one of America's greatest hockey players, which can be found by clicking here: The Quiet American. The one statistic that really jumps out about him is that in his four year career as a center at the University of Minnesota, he averaged a staggering 2.68 points per game--higher than any four year stretch that Wayne Gretzky (2.62) managed during his NHL career.

Mayasich's scoring records at Minnesota still stand, but it is a measure of his greatness that for the 1960 Olympic team he played defense, not forward, breaking up rushes, initiating breakouts, and posing as a threat from the blueline with his trademark slapshot--a weapon that was still in its infancy.

Mayasich and brothers Billy and Bobby Cleary were last minute additions to the 1960 Olympic team. Bill Cleary and Mayasich had played for the silver medal winning US team in 1956, held regular jobs, and didn't want to take a year off to do the Olympic tour leading up to Squaw Valley. Coach Jack Riley was smart enough to know the team couldn't win without them, and tough enough to cut three players who had toured with the squad for nearly four months just a few days before the Olympics began. One of those players was Herb Brooks, a disappointment that helped fuel Brooks' own manic pursuit of the gold in 1980. "Forgotten Miracle" does a wonderful job recalling the chilly reception the latecomers got from their teammates when they joined the team in Squaw Valley, and how Billy Cleary in particular responded to it. At the end of the day, of course, the team realized Riley had been right. Billy Cleary led the team in scoring with 12 points in five games; Bob Cleary added eight points, including the first goal in the 2-1 win over Canada; and Mayasich was the team's best defender. But it is a testament to how late the trio arrived that in the official team photo, pictured below, the faces of Bill Cleary (first row, third from left), Bob Cleary (middle row, next to trainer) and Mayasich (top row, far left) had to be superimposed onto the bodies of the three players who'd been cut at the 11th hour: Brooks, Robert Dupuis, and Larry Alm. Can you imagine? There is no official team photograph of the 1960 team that won the Gold medal. It had to be faked.

There are any number of examples in the documentary that show how the game, and the Olympics, have changed in the intervening 50 years. The day after Mayasich collected his gold medal, he was back in Green Bay selling appliances. Captain Jack Kirrane, a Boston firefighter, was passed over for a promotion because he took the Olympic year off. And the gold medal game against Czechoslovakia was played at 10 a.m. before just a few thousand fans. It was a simpler time, a time when sports--at least in the U.S. and Canada--were truly amateur. None of the 1960 players benefitted financially from the win. No endorsements. No parades. Goalie Jack McCartan, who was sensational during the tournament, was signed by the New York Rangers after the Olympics, but he played only 12 games in the NHL. The only player from the 1960 team who was given a real shot in the NHL was Tom Williams, who ended up playing 663 games over a dozen seasons, primarily with Boston, scoring 161 NHL goals. But Williams was a minor player in Squaw Valley, with only 1 goal and 4 assists for the tournament. The best players, Mayasich and Cleary, never were given a chance.

Not that they were regretful about any of it. The quiet, intense pride of those 1960 players, now in their mid-70s, and their coach, who's 87, shines through in this wonderful documentary. Andrew Sherburne, the film's producer, who came to my house to interview me, told me how surprised he was at the humility of all the players he tracked down. Not an ounce of bitterness or arrogance in them. I wasn't surprised, having talked to a few of the men myself. They reached the highest pinnacle any of them ever hoped to in hockey: Olympic gold medalist. America's first gold medal in hockey. One that was every bit as shocking, in the hockey world, as the 1980 triumph. But without 1/100th of the attention.

In the film you can see how much enjoyment these men got from the sport, whether it was in recalling the memories of having snowballs fired at them by fans in Sweden, or recalling how one of the players, Paul Johnson, nearly left the team in the middle of the Olympics to go to Las Vegas because he needed some money. They were characters; they were honorable; they were tough as grit; and they were sportsmen who played the game for love and pride. One doesn't see their ilk much in the sports world anymore. But they are bigger than life in this film, and finally getting the recognition they so richly deserve.

Rogue River steelhead

2009-10-25T11:09:00.027-04:00

Back in June I wrote a blog describing a good day's fishing on the Deerfield River in western Massachusetts. In response I got a cheeky email from old friend Bob Brown, a former Sports Illustrated editor who now lives in Portland, Oregon, that said, in essence, if I wanted to try a real float trip, to join him in October, when he'd be fishing for steelhead on Oregon's Rogue River. I decided to bite.
...I'd never fished for steelhead before, but it had always been on my "to do" list, and the prospect of bumping into Tonya Harding while floating past a trailer park only added to the appeal of Bob's invitation. Steelhead are sea-run rainbow: trout that are hatched in a river, migrate into the ocean, then return to the river after one, two, or three years to spawn. Unlike salmon, steelhead do not die after spawning, but return to the ocean, where they grow ever larger and, if they are lucky, come back to spawn again and again. The world record on a fly, caught earlier this year on the Hoh River in Washington, is 29.5 pounds, but any steelhead over 10 pounds is a memorable fish.
...Bob had made reservations at Morrison's Lodge, which is on the Rogue, in Merlin, Ore., about an hour from the Medford Airport. (My wife and I actually made the 8 hour drive from San Francisco). Sally is quite a keen fisherman herself, and had decided that, while Bob and I fished with his favorite guide, Dennis, she'd take whatever guide was available and would strike out on her own. Dennis is 62, is as lean as a 15-year-old, and hasn't shaved or cut his hair since the Reagan administration. A carpenter by trade, he made his wooden drift boat by hand, and knows the Rogue like a lab knows its favorite couch. He calls the steelhead: "the fish of a thousand casts." By noon I was up to 662 without a hit.

...Despite its name, the Rogue is actually a reasonably navigable river, with long, wide stretches broken up intermittently by shallow, wade-able rapids. It is in these rapids and the tailwaters below them that the steelhead lie, often feeding on the eggs of the Chinook salmon that are spawning in the gravel shallows. Both Bob and I were using weighted egg-sucking stonefly nymphs with nymph droppers, not a delicate form of flyfishing, otherwise known as "chuck and duck." In the tailwaters, Dennis had us switch to streamers, which we cast at an angle downstream, then let swing behind the boat, before we stripped in. Steelhead usually strike on the swing. We caught several small trout in this manner, rainbow under 12 inches that had not yet migrated to the sea, but it was a slow day by any standards. Having been on the water since 8:15, by 3:30 we had still not had a real strike.
....In this regard steelhead fishing is not unlike fishing for Atlantic salmon. You pound the water and pay your dues. There's not a lot of finesse or subtlety to it, no matching the hatch or changing to a lighter tippet. You cast, cast, cast, check for wind knots, and hope for the best. If you are lucky, a freight train hits.
....Mine came in at 3:31. We were floating into the top portion of a rapid, and I cast my egg-sucking nymph into the white water as I'd done hundreds of times already that day. I'd just had time to mend the line when my line started rushing upstream as if I'd snagged a rock. I didn't have to worry about setting the hook. The fish did that for me as I just tried to hang onto the rod and stay out of the way of the line stripping off the reel. The fish turned and started back downstream--the tell that this was a steelhead, not a spawning salmon--and as Dennis pulled the driftboat over, I jumped out and followed the running fish.
....The steelhead had just made it into my backing when it stopped in a heavy portion of the current and faced back upstream. I continued to reel as I walked, but I couldn't move it. Dennis told me he'd put 1x tippet on my line, which is about 12 pound test--strong but not strong enough to drag a big fish around in heavy current. I was worried about breaking it if I forced the issue. When my line still hadn't moved after a couple of minutes, I began to think the fish had somehow wrapped itself around a rock or log in the middle of the river. I asked Dennis if that was possible. Then the steelhead started shaking its head.
....I gradually began to gain line, inching the fish closer. The steelhead moved sideways through the water, a great gray shadow, giving us a good view of his length and thickness. I'd never seen a steelhead in the water before, but Dennis allowed this was a big one--a special fish. "I'm going to get below him," he said, moving downstream with his net. "Don't let him go any further. We'll never get him if he goes through those rapids further down."
...I started to gain a little more line, but the fish was still strong and not ready to come in. Dennis was still twenty feet away from it when the steelhead moved sideways again in the current, a short but sudden move. That extra tension it put on the tippet was too much. The line broke, springing back toward me, and the fish disappeared.
...It had been on for ten minutes. We'd had a good look, but the fish hadn't jumped, and outside of a thick slab of silver gray in the river, I didn't have a very good idea of its color or beauty. We'd have released it anyway, but no picture, no satisfying hoisting of its weight. To lose a fish like that isn't something one gets over easily. But that was why we'd come. That was the fish I'd signed on for. Dennis allowed it would have been the biggest steelhead landed by someone from the Lodge that summer, 12 pounds at least. It is certainly a fish I'll never forget.
...Back at the lodge, we shared war stories with other guests. Several steelhead had been caught that day, but none near the size of the one I'd lost. Sally had caught a couple of "half-pounders" as they call the little guys, but hadn't seen any adult fish. Her guide generally took out spincasters and bait fishermen, so it wasn't exactly a good match. But tomorrow she was going with Pablo, who'd been guiding flyfishermen on the Rogue for 34 years. Bob and I would be going out again with Dennis.
....What can I tell you? It was beautiful. The company was great. We tried like hell. But the skunk never left the boat. Not a strike from an adult fish. You could have stacked all the midgets we caught on a scale and they wouldn't have weighed two pounds. A long, frustrating day on the Rogue.
...But Sally? With Pablo? She was grinning like a Cheshire cat when we returned to the Lodge, sipping on her first martini. They have a nice tradition at Morrison's of posting pictures of the fish that are caught that day on a bulletin board by the bar, and this what greeted Bob and me when we bellied up for our first drink:

Not just one steelhead. Two. Two beauties. One of them "The Catch of the Week"--was estimated at 10-12 pounds. (They didn't weigh it because Sally stuck her thumb in the fish's mouth while trying to pose with it and began bleeding all over the boat.) The "small" one was 27 inches. The big guy over 30 inches. Both fish jumped and ran and generally gave Sally a gay old time on the river with Pablo. And it turns out, she sheepishly admitted, she'd caught a third steelhead in the 20-22 inch range that they hadn't even bothered to photograph. Ho-hum. Just another day on the river.
....She didn't even know the name of the fly she was using--some sort of purple streamer that Pablo had tied. Bob was ready to strangle her. And me. And Pablo, shown here holding Sally's big fish.
...But such are the healing powers of vodka that after a couple of drinks we were able to look at Sally's success as a group effort. Bob had suggested the Rogue. I'd driven the car up from San Francisco. And Sally had finished the job the men so manfully had started.
....It was a pretty good couple of days.

Chrissy and Greg and another prediction. (Sox win!)

2009-10-08T10:01:00.019-04:00

The problem with making predictions in print is they're often wrong. If they weren't, I'd be making a handsome living betting on sports. (I don't, by the way. Never have.) So Chicago didn't land the 2016 Olympics. So they were the first city voted out. Miss by an inch, might as well miss by a mile. I did. It happens. I'm already over it. Rio was the right choice. I just didn't think the IOC would make it. Someone from the Windy City forgot to deliver the suitcase of cash.
...The most memorable erroneous prediction I made was in the May 14, 1984 issue of Sports Illustrated on the eve of the Stanley Cup finals that pitted the four-time defending champs, the New York Islanders, vs. Wayne Gretzky's Edmonton Oilers. The Isles had swept the Oilers in the 1983 finals, and while I was a big fan of the Oilers run-and-gun style, I thought the Isles veterans had one more Cup in them. "...the Islanders will beat the Edmonton Oilers and win their fifth straight Cup," I wrote. "Five games? Six games? It doesn't matter. The Islanders will win it." [After a slow start New York stuck it to the Canadiens and - 05.14.84 - SI Vault]
...They didn't. The Oilers steamrolled the Isles in five. A lot of cities would have been satisfied with their first Stanley Cup. Not Edmonton, which has a cowtown mentality. They wanted to rub their victory in the face of the big city writer who had dismissed their heroes so cavalierly. The next week a huge funeral wreathe arrived at Sports Illustrated's editorial offices in New York, addressed to me and sent by the City of Edmonton. It was four feet across and adorned with white lilies and a card that said: E.M. Swift's Prediction, R.I.P.
The gesture earned a mention and a photo in the next week's Letter From the Publisher.
I have no clue what happened to the wreathe. I was on vacation and never saw it...
How about a story? By now you've probably heard that Greg Norman, the Great White Shark, and Chrissy Evert, the 54-year-old erstwhile tennis queen, have split after 15 whole months of marriage. Lots of theories on why: Evert didn't want to move into the estate where Norman's wife used to live; Norman's kids couldn't stand her; two huge egos don't fit in one marriage. Probably all have an element of truth.
... Theirs was a high-profile, short-lived romance, the subject of a long, gushy, embarrassing article in Sports Illustrated [At 54, Chris Evert and Greg Norman make each other feel - 04.13.09 - SI Vault]by the ordinarily reliable John Garrity, who treated us to the image of the two world-renowned narcissists as lovebirds stroking one another's feet. Evert, who has managed to cultivate and hang onto her image as "America's sweetheart" despite her three failed high-profile marriages (to British tennis player John Lloyd, to former skier Andy Mill, and to Norman), has a checkered reputation within the industry. So one prediction I would never have made was that her marriage to Norman would last.
...I have to be careful here, since this is a family oriented blog. The story I'm about to share involves a sexual favor. Or the promise of one. It is an act that men consider a treat, that many women consider a chore, and that President Clinton swore was not having sex at all. For the purposes of this blog, let's call this favor: "a piece of gum."
...So here's the story. Mills and Norman, who used to be best friends, were teamed together in a member-guest golf tournament a few years ago. Evert, who was married to Mills at the time, was dutifully following the duo. Mills faced an eagle putt on a par five, and as he stalked the green with Norman, reading the putt, Evert said within earshot of the caddy who told me this story: "Andy, if you sink this putt, I'll give you a [piece of gum]." Then she grinned at Norman. "In fact, I'll give you both [pieces of gum]."
... Mills missed the putt.
... When I heard that story, Mills and Evert were still married. So I was not exactly flabberghasted when the next time I saw her she was following Norman around at the 2008 British Open, cooing and batting her eyes like a schoolgirl.
...Enough of that. Time for my Red Sox-Angels prediction.
I've wrestled with this one, because I really admire the way the Angels play baseball. They run, they bunt, they play good defense. And the Red Sox are a flawed team this year, with Papi's struggles, the inconsistency of J.D. Drew in the middle of the order, Josh Beckett's late-season problems, and Matsusaka's disappearing act for the first five months of the season. And the Angels will run wild on Sox catchers Jason Varitek and Victor Martinez, who threw out only 8.5% and 10.5% of would be base stealers this year, respectively.
...But I just don't think the Angels starting pitching is enough to shut down the Sox offense, and I love Jon Lester in Game One. Beckett has a history of rising to the occasion in the post-season, and Matsuzaka is finally healthy and throwing well. Plus their late-inning, fireballing relief corps of Daniel Bard, Billy Wagner, and Jon Papelbon is as formidable as they come. And don't underestimate the "We've got your number" theory. The Sox eliminated the Angels in 2004, 2007 and 2008. No curse last forever--well, the Cubs one might--but look for the Red Sox to win it in four.
...Take that prediction to the bank. (But don't bet on it!)

Chicago will win the 2016 Olympics, and a pie to remember

2009-09-29T09:40:00.017-04:00

President Obama's last minute decision to fly to Copenhagen this week to try to tip the scales in Chicago's favor as site of the 2016 Olympics was a good call but a bad precedent. I think it will work, and the president's appearance will make the difference, because of the nature of the International Olympic Committee. But it's a lousy way to determine on the venue of the Olympic Games.
....Obama didn't start this. Great Britain's Tony Blair did, traveling to Singapore in 2005 for a last-ditch effort on behalf of London's bid to host the 2012 Olympics. It worked, and London upset heavily favored Paris by a 54-50 vote. Russia's Vladimir Putin was next, appearing before the IOC on the eve of the vote and successfully landing the 2014 Winter Games for unheralded Sochi. Before Blair and Putin, it was unheard of for a major world leader to lobby IOC delegates in person before they voted, and the truth of the matter is the delegates like the attention. They revel in it. That's because IOC members are largely self-aggrandizing, un-idealistic, leeches who travel in style, dine sumptuously, and luxuriate in their power and influence and all manner of pomp and circumstance. They are the Mr. Toads of amateur sport. Obama is an international rock star, whose popularity extends across Europe, through Africa, and even to the Arab states. That' a lot of votes that the U.S. usually doesn't get when the IOC congress meets. So even though the heads of state from Japan (Tokyo), Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), and Spain (Madrid) will also be in Copenhagen lobbying for votes, Obama's presence trumps them. He's the Leader of the Free World, and he isn't Bush (who would have been a negative). Never mind that the U.S. Federal Government has absolutely nothing to do with financing the Games and that his appearance is strictly for show. Most of what the IOC does is for show. It's a perfect match. If Obama stays home, the Games would go to Rio. They should go to Rio, for heaven's sake, since the Olympics have never been hosted in South America. But they won't.
...So from an American perspective, and for the city of Chicago, Obama's doing the right thing. He'll undoubtedly be criticized for it in some quarters, and the trip's not without risk, since a defeat in Copenhagen will be seen as a personal defeat for Obama. But he'd be criticized more for not going. As Michele Obama said, "You're darned if you do and you're darned if you don't. I'd rather be on the side of doing it, and I think that's how the president feels."
....One wonders, though, how the IOC will ever get off this merry-go-round of dueling heads of state. Somebody's going to be embarrassed when they return home. How silly to allow these world leaders to be there in the first place. As Richard Pound, the longtime IOC representative from Canada, observes, "It might be getting out of hand when the president of the free world has to drop everything to be there."

Late September is apple harvest time at Breakwind Farm, as it is throughout most of the northeast and upper midwest. I picked mine on Saturday, and I always make a few pies before going on to the more arduous tasks of making cider and applesause and chutney. This year I happened on a easy, delicious recipe that is not something you will find in any store. And I stumbled on it because, with all the rain, this has also been a banner year for raspberries, and my three-year-old raspberry bushes are, for the first time, in full harvest mode.

So for the last couple of weeks I've always had a half-pint of fresh raspberries around. They spoil pretty quickly, so it's been a challenge to keep up. (Having made blackberry jam, apple-mint jelly, and grape-rosemary jelly, I am jammed and jellied out.) Anyway, it's generally a good idea to squeeze some lemon juice on an apple pie to add some tartness, and this year I thought I'd try adding raspberries instead. They're pretty tart. It turned out to be a good idea. Fresh apples and raspberries go brilliantly together.

Before a share the recipe, a word about piecrusts. Make that four words. I can't make them. I CANNOT MAKE A PIE CRUST. I've tried, and they tear, or glop, or dry, or fall on the floor. If you can make a pie crust that's flaky and light, go wild. Knock yourself out. Me, I buy frozen crusts. I am not Julia Child, despite the many recipes in this blog. And if I can buy a better pie crust than I can make, I'll swallow my pride and buy it. By far the best brand I've found comes from Oronoque Orchards. 9-inch, Deep Dish, flaky homestyle pie crusts. Found in your grocer's frozen food section.

Breakwind Farm's Apple-Raspberry Pie

6-8 apples, cored, peeled and sliced
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. salt
about 20 fresh raspberries and/or blueberries
drizzle of honey

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Lay apple slices in the pie crust, piling high in the center.
Scatter raspberries/blueberries on top evenly
Mix sugar and spices together. Sprinkle over the fruit.
Drizzle with honey.
Put a second pie crust over the top; prick with a fork.
Place on cookie sheet. Bake 15 mins. at 425 degrees. Turn oven down to 375 degrees and bake another 30 mins., or until crust is golden brown.

Let cool. Serve with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, or plain.
Autumn will explode in your mouth!

The golf ball and the underrated dolgo crabapple

2009-08-30T11:10:00.024-04:00

Yesterday it was officially announced that the 2013 U.S. Amateur golf championship would be held at The Country Club, in Brookline, Massachusetts, marking the centennial of Francis Ouimet's victory there in the 1913 U.S. Open. I am a member of that wonderful club, and, like the majority of members, am excited that the U.S.G.A. has chosen to recognize Ouimet's historic win in such a fashion. Several years ago, many of us had been hoping the U.S. Open would be held at TCC in 2013, but negotiations broke down over a variety of issues. However, hosting the U.S. Amateur can be construed as a possible precursor of a future Open, perhaps in 2018 or 2023. There is already a
blueprint for a couple of million dollars in "improvements" to the course in anticipation of such an event. Fortunately, due to the moribund economy, these design changes--new tees to lengthen some holes, new bunkers in landing areas 300 yards or more yards from the tees--have been tabled. But they're coming, I'm sure of that. Like all of the old, classic courses, The Country Club has fallen victim to technology, and holes that used to require a drive and a three-iron are now a drive and a wedge. 550 yard par 5s are easily reached in two shots. 350 yard par 4s are drive-able. So we lengthen the tees until we run out of space, at a cost to the membership of millions of dollars.
...The problem, as Jack Nicklaus has said for years, is the golf ball. The metal drivers have something to do with the extra length players are getting off the tee--I am 57 and hit it as far as I ever have--but by far the biggest factor is the ball. So I wonder what the solution is?
...Let me think. Let me think. Could it possibly be to regulate the ball?
...I can only think of one other pro sport where players bring their own ball to the competition. Bowling.
...Bowling and golf. Now there's some select company.
...Can you imagine a baseball pitcher who insisted on using his own ball when he took the mound? Absurd. Yet the fathers of golf insist the equipment companies are so powerful that you could never get, say, Tiger Woods to play with anything but a Nike ball. Poppycock. In tennis, another sport heavily influenced by endorsements from Nike, Wilson, Spalding, et al., the balls are given to the players. Roddick can't chose one brand, Federer another. But golf officials, somehow, haven't the guts to stand up to the players and their multiple corporate sponsors: Titleist, Nike, Callaway, Bridgestone, and the rest.
...Look, I don't care what happens on the PGA Tour. Let the players bomb 400 yard drives at the ATT Invitational all they want. But the U.S.G.A., the not-for-profit organization which oversees the game and hosts our national championship, should be able to take the Open to historic old courses without requiring them to put in a whole new set of tees in order to "defend" par. The U.S.G.A. should have the cojones to say to Tiger, Phil, and Vijay: "Thanks for coming. Here's the ball you'll be using for the next four days. It says U.S. Open on it, and it's a 90 compression balata." Or whatever. Everyone plays with the same ball. What a concept! It's called a level playing field. And it's called monetary sense. Enough of the 7,600 yard courses. Because it will never end. Technology's not going to stop here. The balls will keep going further if someone doesn't put a lid on it. Let's keep the old designs relevant and save everyone (but the course architects and equipment companies) a pile of dough.
...

The other big news from Massachusetts yesterday (that had nothing to do with a funeral) was here at Breakwind Farm we harvested our crop of dolgo crabapples and made applesauce. It is a tart-ish, red applesauce that we use with pork, on gingerbread, and as a stand-alone desert topped with vanilla ice cream. As you can see, part of its appeal is visual. You simply cannot find anything like this in the supermarket. So if any of you readers are thinking of planting an ornamental tree that is easy to care for and also produces a useful, unique fruit, I heartily recommend the dolgo crab. It likes full sun, is fast growing, and looks like this in the springtime.
(My bees LOVE it1) Then in late august, without the least assistance from me (I don't even spray), it produces an abundance of golf-ball sized, red crab apples, too tart to enjoy raw, but which can be easily made into applesauce or jelly.

...Here's my recipe for Breakwind Applesauce.

20 cups dolgo crab apples, stemmed and cut in half
4 or 5 regular apples, stemmed and quartered
1 1/2 cups water
1 cinnamon stick
3 cloves
juice from 1/2 lemon
5 cups sugar

Wash, stem, and halve the apples. Put in large pot with water, cloves, cinnamon stick and lemon juice. Cook 20 minutes over medium heat, covered.

At this point it should look something like this:

Put through a food mill. (This is a food mill:

Stir in five cups of sugar. Bring to a boil.
Put into 1 pint jars. Makes 8 pints.

The jars, of course, should be sterilized. Then after they've been filled and sealed, you should still boil them while completely immersed for several minutes. The result: red, delicious, dolgo applesauce, which all winter long serves as a reminder that spring is just around the bend.

Johnny Damon vs. J.D. Drew, an epic Red Sox Gaffe

2009-08-18T10:40:00.017-04:00

The Red Sox front office has had some hits and misses in the last five years, but no miss was greater than the failure to re-sign Johnny Damon after the 2005 season. Yes, the once-beloved Damon is now hated in Boston because of his decision to jump to the despised Yankees, lured by an offer of $52 million, over 4 years. But Damon was the heart and soul of the 2004 World Series winners who broke the Curse of the Bambino, chief idiot of the self-described "idiots" who came back so improbably from the 3-0 deficit against the Bronx Bombers. He owned Boston back then. Women loved him. Men admired him. And Damon wanted to stay. Until, that is, the Sox low-balled him. Then he was gone. For $12 million, it's tough to blame him.
It is tempting to put the finger on youthful GM Theo Epstein for this front office gaffe, but Epstein was having a dispute with team president Larry Lucchino at the time, and wasn't, temporarily, with the team. Lucchino was in charge of the negotiations with Damon's agent, Scott Boras, and the Sox' final offer of $40 million for 4 years was well short of what the Yanks were willing to pay. As soon as Damon signed with New York, the bad-mouthing started. He was "an old" 32, his best years behind him. He had no arm and was just an average fielder. His shoulder was suspect. By the end of his contract, the Yankees would surely rue paying him $12 million a year.

....Guess what? The Yanks got their money's worth, and then some. Damon's having a phenomenal season in the final year of that four-year contract, and the Yanks are talking about re-signing him in the off-season. Damon still has power--22 homers already in hitter-friendly Yankee Stadium--83 runs scored, 8 steals, 52 walks, a leader in the clubhouse, popular with the fans and press...what's not to like? The Yanks are headed for the World Series, and the 35-year-old Damon is putting up numbers for his career--he has 2,389 hits and could reach 3,000--that probably will land him in the Hall of Fame.
....And the Red Sox? They're in a August swoon, and in place of Damon they went out and signed J.D. "Nancy" Drew.
....Okay, that's a cheapshot. Drew outgrew that nickname in the 2007 playoffs, when he eradicated the memory of a lousy first season with the Red Sox by helping them to their second World Series title in four years with a good post-season. At that point it seemed maybe boy wonder Theo Epstein had been smart to fling $70 million over five years at the oft-injured Drew (also represented by Boras)--$30 million more than the club had offered Damon. But with two years remaining on that contract, it's now clear: Drew is grossly overpaid; and Damon is sorely missed.

...Yes, Drew has a better arm than Damon, and plays a respectable right field. But a comparison of their offensive totals shows that Drew falls short of Damon in every category but one: walks. Theo loves walks. I prefer runs and ribbies. In Damon's four years with the Yankees,including this partial season, he has averaged 135 games, 150 hits, 97 runs, 19 homers, 22 steals, 70 RBIs, and 62 walks. Great numbers. Drew, in his three seasons with Boston, including this partial, has averaged just 116 games, 105 hits, 75 runs, 14 homers, 58 RBIs, 3 steals, and 73 walks. The guy's a walking machine. He really knows how to take a pitch. Unfortunately, he usually bats fifth or sixth, because most startling among those numbers is that Damon, usually a leadoff hitter, has averaged 12 more RBIs a season than Drew. If you also throw in the lousy offensive year that centerfielder Coco Crisp had in 2006 (105 games,.264 average, 8 homers, 58 runs, 36 RBIs)--after Damon left but before Drew was signed--you get the full picture of how much Boston has struggled to replace Damon's bat.
...Beyond that, Damon had personality and fire, something the 33-year-old Drew has shown little of during his stay in Boston.
....It's time for Bostonians to stop booing and give Johnny Damon his due. The guy was fun, he was good, and the Red Sox are worse off without him. The fact that he's headed for the post season now while Boston is reeling just rubs more salt in this self-inflicted wound. Meanwhile, the Red Sox will be stuck with the most overpaid right fielder in baseball for two more seasons. He looks like an old man now at 33. What's he going to look like in 2011?
....Why they signed you, Nancy, will always be a mystery to me.

Eggs Edward

2009-08-12T09:44:00.006-04:00

I don't know why breakfast gets such little respect as a real meal. A person hasn't eaten in 10 or 12 hours, he should be hungry for something more than a bowl of cereal or a piece of toast. I have one friend who has a Coke for breakfast. Many others who have nothing at all, or who grab a cup of coffee while heading out the door. You've all heard the old saw about breakfast being the most important meal of the day. I think that's probably true, but at the very least you should treat it as you would any other meal by preparing it with good, fresh ingredients and varying the menu every once in awhile.
...With that in mind, allow me to share the recipe for my favorite breakfast: Eggs Edward. Step aside, Benedict, your day is over. (Really, Hollandaise Sauce before noon? Just inject me with Crisco and be done with it.)
...Here at Breakwind Farm, August is generally a time when we are knee deep in fresh tomatoes. (Not this year. The incessant rain in the northeast has postponed the tomato crop, and given much of it blight. My first tomatoes are still bright green--but that's another recipe for another day.) I started eating sliced tomatoes on toast for breakfast as a way to keep up with the harvest, and eventually began experimenting with other flavors that were complimentary. Hence the birth of Eggs Edward.

Ingredients: 2 slices crisp bacon
1 English muffin, or two slices white bread, toasted and buttered
1 sliced tomato
2 poached eggs
fresh basil
salt and pepper to taste.

This takes no longer than five minutes to prepare, start to finish, or as long as it takes to crisp the bacon. Heat water in a frying pan to a boil to poach the eggs, or you can use a fancy poaching device. The frying pan works fine, however, if you add a tablespoon of white vinegar to the water before adding the eggs. The vinegar, for whatever reason, keeps the eggs from spreading out, and the result is an imperfectly round but nonetheless compact and delicious poached egg.
Meanwhile, toast the muffin and butter the halves. Top each half with a slice of tomato, a piece of bacon broken in half, one egg (remove the egg from the fry pan with a slotted spoon, being careful to drain off the water), and slivers of fresh basil. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve with fresh coffee. Bon Appetite!!