Here’s looking at you, Satan.

We head into the second major of the year with less questions to answer than expected. Rafael Nadal’s knees have withstood the rigors of the European clay court season. Serena Williams dispatched Victoria Azarenka with ease in Rome, proving the only person who stands a chance of stopping Serena from winning her second French Open title is Serena herself. The favorites have made an impressive case, one so strong that seeing someone other than Nadal and Williams leave Roland Garros with a garish trophy and fat check in hand will be quite surprising.

It’s the ‘others’ that will intrigue in Paris. The others being the group of players that have a shot – however fleeting – at knocking off the overwhelming favorites. On the men’s side three names come to mind, all with their own personal demons when it comes to taking down Rafa on clay, let alone at a major. Roger Federer will need divine intervention to win it all, and no, Robin Soderling is not walking through that door. Novak Djokovic is the only hope for the anti Rafa crowd and he’s coming off an uncharacteristic loss to Tomas Berdych. The Czech big man could be this year’s Soderling. Unfortunately the words ‘could be ‘ have been synonymous with Berdych’s career up until this point.

On the women’s side there is slightly more belief. Serena bowed out in the first round last year, losing to Virginie Razzano in one of the biggest upsets in French Open history. Azarenka will be there at the end, as will Maria Sharapova. Unfortunately for those two their head-to-head numbers against Williams are terrible (4-25 combined).

Two weeks in Paris awaits.

Who Won’t Win (Crazy Family Edition) 

Bernard Tomic 

Sympathy is all the tennis world has to offer Bernie Tomic at this point. His father, John, is awaiting trial for headbutting his son’s hitting partner in Madrid. While that sounds like a lost episode of Murder She Wrote it’s par for the course when it comes to John Tomic. In March of last year Bernard asked an umpire to throw his father out of the stadium in Miami for disrupting a match. The hitting partner that was allegedly beaten by Father Tomic also said Bernard has been subject to physical abuse from his Dad. Tomic’s chances on the dirt aren’t great. Wimbledon will be his next opportunity to make the long awaited jump into the top-tier, but a run in Paris would be a good start to forgetting another depressing episode. Here’s hoping we have something good to talk about regarding the Australian number one in a week’s time. John will coach Bernard in Paris–even though he is banned from tournament grounds–because you don’t choose your family. They choose you.

Caroline Wozniacki

The world was Caroline’s oyster in January 2012. Heading into the Australian Open the Dane, seeded number one, was on the cusp of winning her first Grand Slam. She went on to lose to eventual champion Kim Clijsters in the fourth round and lost her number one ranking in the process. From then on it’s been rough. Matters have not been helped by Wozniacki’s father, Piotr. Whether it’s being a petulant idiot in the stands or berating his daughter on the practice court, one wonders what could delude someone into to thinking this sort of ‘support’ is helpful.

The family-player dynamic in tennis is one of the more bizarre in sports. While it’s plausible Walter Gretzky heckled Wayne with brutal  jabs until that wrist shot was just right, at least he had the wherewithal to do it behind closed doors. Awful jokes aside it’s worth tracking the success of players who have sought outside help after being coached by a family member. As Sport Illustrated’s Courtney Ngyuen points out, Li Na and Aga Radwanska thrived after ditching their kin.

The New York Times Goes To Paris

After conquering Melbourne with $100 in his pocket we find Seth Kugel in Paris, where travelling frugally is easier said than done. The prospect of no Beer during a weekend in a new city is  frightening–and also a sign I may have a problem–but Seth managed, taking in as many free museums as he could while eating for cheap. Along his travels one scene stood out for the frugal traveler.

Charles DeGeorge’s 19th-century sculpture “La Jeunesse d’Aristotle,” a marble rendering of the young philosopher reading pensively, while just behind him a flesh-and-blood young strawberry-blonde struck a virtually identical pose, sending a text message.

Needed beer for this. Truth be told it’s hard not to be envious of Seth’s travel savvy. Along the way he met new friends who showed him around the city without destroying his budget. Comédie-Française, Musée Carnavalet and Cathédrale Notre Dame were all covered. Unfortunately no beer and no wine makes Devang go something something.

Happy Birthday, Suzanne

Born on May 24th, 1899, Suzanne Lenglen dominated women’s tennis from 1919 to 1926. In that span she lost once. Yes, once. Not only was she a fantastic player, Lenglen was an iconoclast during a tumultuous time, bucking deeply intrenched trends with bravado that would make today’s players blush. Lenglen’s father played a large role in grooming his daughter for success – sound familiar – but that didn’t stop Suzanne from a legitimate boss.

Lenglen was nothing if not daring. Her disdain for convention was a large part of her allure during the period of social tumult that followed World War I. She was continually doing in broad daylight what most people only dreamed of in the dark of night. She drank, she danced, she smoked, she swore, she wore her skirts short and her arms bare and she had lovers—lots of them. She was a Gallic elaboration on the postwar silent movie siren, The Vamp, adding to that sullen stereotype her own elements of wit and charm.

As profiles go, this is one of the best I’ve read. It’s worth your time.

The Commentator That Will Make You Cringe 

Banal commentary is the bane of the sports fan’s existence. Watch a single Blue Jays broadcast with the sole task of listening to Pat Tabler speak and questions regarding life’s worthiness will ensue.

Mats Wilander is worth listening to.  Wilander wasn’t the most skilled player, but he excelled in the mental aspect of the game. He brought these strengths to the commentary booth. Wilander has taken Federer to task for his failure to change his tactics against Nadal, and also went as far as claiming the Swiss star ‘lacked balls’ when facing Rafa. Fed fans, including myself, weren’t pleased. The truth is hard to hear sometimes.

Wilander drew the ire of former charge Marat Safin after criticizing the Russian’s sister for failing to play well in Grand Slam finals. Wilander isn’t a bullshit artist and unlike some of his colleagues his filter is often shut off. That’s why Mats is cringe worthy. Not for uttering awful cliches while dancing around a touchy subject, but for saying what we, the people at home, are thinking. Catch him on Eurosport during the tournament.

Wayback Playback

The First Round Match You Should Watch

Milos Raonic v. Xavier Malisse

Milos has had a rough time on the clay this season, losing to likes of Philipp Kohlschreiber and Fernando Verdasco in consecutive weeks. While those results are disheartening they may have been for the greater good. After two and a half years Raonic split with coach Galo Blanco in search of change. Long time tennis scribe Neil Harman reports the lanky Canadian has been working with Brad Gilbert in the lead up to the French Open. Long-term, Gilbert hasn’t always enjoyed the best relationships with his charges, but his ability to induce immediate change in the short term helped players like Andy Roddick, Andy Murray and Kei Nishikori make the leap from talented youngster to legitimate pro.

Raonic is farther along than those players were when Gilbert began working with them, but the nickname dropping American will provide a sorely needed new set of eyes.

The Contenders

Rafa, Serena and everyone else. The question, and it’s a good one, is who needs this more. Nadal’s return from knee troubles can already be deemed a success. A dominant run through the clay court season saw the Spanish Bull stretched more than usual–Ernests Gulbis came close to beating him in Rome–but the record doesn’t lie. Eight finals in a row, 36-2 since returning in February and a 52-1 all time mark at Roland Garros makes him an overwhelming favorite.  For Serena, this tournament is huge. She’s won 24 consecutive matches heading into Paris and is also 36-2 this season. She’s gone 67-3 since Wimbledon last year. Crazy.

As I mentioned, there’s them and then, there’s everyone else. Players who could spoil the coronation include Gulbis, Frenchman Richard Gasquet, who could be buoyed by the home crowd, though his record in five set matches against the elite is not good. Marion Bartoli – who also has quite the insane family - is streaky as hell, but also has the ability to takeout a top seed. Federer and Djokovic should be there late in week 2 along with Sharapova and Azarenka. How much they have left after a grueling trip through the mid-rounds will be telling. Rafa isn’t dropping needless sets to #64 in the World on clay.

The draw was kind to Federer, who starts off with two qualifiers and avoids Nadal until the final. A Rafa-Nole semi-final is on the horizon. Sharapova and Azarenka are in the bottom half of the draw, setting up a potential all-world shriek fest in the semi-fnals.

The Picks

Nadal d. Federer

S. Williams d. Azarenka

I used to be bold back in the day. Enjoy the next two weeks and remember, cracking a bottle of wine at 9 AM is generally acceptable as long as you’re not in a relationship, don’t have kids and have little to live for. Just be confident about it.

Like many Canadians of a similar background and age to my own, I loved open-wheel racing before I even understood that it was open-wheel racing that I loved. Also, like many Canadians of a similar background and age to my own, my love for North America’s premier source for open-wheel racing came to an abrupt halt in the mid-nineties when the departure of Jacques Villeneuve from the Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) series conspired with the introduction of the Indy Racing League (IRL) – and subsequent desecration of the Indy 500 – to reduce the relevance of the sport on the entire continent.

Eighteen years later, the IndyCar Series is haunted by this past, even as it strives to return to a time when its brand of racing attracted new fans and captivated long-time supporters. Leading the charge to fight these ghosts and bring the sport back to an era of increased public interest is a 26-year-old driver from Oakville, Ontario – James Hinchcliffe.

After winning the 2011 IndyCar Rookie of the Year, the former Newman-Haas and current Andretti Autosport driver has emerged as a championship contender in 2013 thanks to two early season victories, including a thrilling win at the Sao Paulo Indy 300 that has people talking of “all-time finishes.”

While Hinchcliffe’s success on the track has been promising, his affability off of it has become just as important. The driver’s social media presence combined with the accessibility of his viral videos, wherein he imitates current and former auto racing personalities, have granted him a level of notoriety that translates into increased public awareness for himself and greater promotion for his sport.

His resulting popularity is a godsend to a beleaguered IndyCar Series in search of relevance once again. Hinchcliffe is talented, articulate, and perhaps most importantly, he’ll talk to anybody.

Upon meeting Hinchcliffe there’s an immediate understanding as to how befitting his nickname – the Mayor of Hinchtown is. He has an intangible ability, most recognizable as the one frequently misused by politicians (and typically absent in athletes), to be captivating while simultaneously making those around him feel as though they’re equally interesting.

He is an absolute necessity for a sport that has done so much to alienate its former fan base, and so little to attract a new one, that what should be a popular and excited sport is often relegated to the back end of sports highlight shows, and until recently, has had trouble finding a permanent home on television.

This wasn’t always the case. In Canada, there is a lost generation of auto racing enthusiasts whose fascination with the sport was not annexed by destiny, fate or the will of the stars, but by a horrible combination of mismanagement, tragedy and the self-interest of others.

Toronto’s first CART sanctioned IndyCar race happened on my sixth birthday – July 20th, 1986. In the spring of the previous year, the promotional division of Molson Breweries proposed to run an open-wheel race at Exhibition Place that would cost the company more than $50 million in insurance costs alone. Canadian sports writer Stephen Brunt, then working for the Globe and Mail, referred to the race as “the most expensive beer commercial in Canadian history.”

The advertisement almost never occurred at all, as Toronto City Council approved the race by only two votes. Then, the Fédération Internationale de Sport Automobile, pursuing its ongoing dispute with CART, threatened to suspend any members who participated in the race. Finally, the brewery that sponsored the event was only allowed to name the race the Molson Indy when the Ontario Supreme Court ruled a week before the CART series came to Toronto that the Indianapolis Speedway wouldn’t suffer damage to their brand through Molson’s use of the “Indy” name.

If we understand sports to be appealing based on the vicarious relationship we have with it – that we put ourselves in the place of the athletes that we watch so that their success/failures are our own success/failures – imagine the spectacular thrill that auto racing provides to a child who has never been behind the wheel of a vehicle of any sorts other than maybe a go-cart. Car racing was vicarious and fantastical at the same time.

Young sports fans who watched baseball or soccer could know and understand exactly what was happening because they could play baseball and soccer with their friends. The same wasn’t true of auto racing. There was an element of spectacle that couldn’t be duplicated by other sports.

Fortunately for those of us mesmerized by the very first Molson Indy, it was just the beginning. Open-wheel racing took off in Canada. There were more events, and perhaps most importantly, more drivers. Over the next ten years, we went from cheering for Andretti, Rahal and Sullivan to Goodyear, Tracy and Villeneuve.

While the Canadian element certainly grabbed our interest, it was the CART format that held it. Less aristocratic than Formula One, yet more demure than NASCAR, IndyCar racing was every bit as popular on television as NASCAR domestically, and it was in the process of challenging F1 for prestige internationally with the additions of former champions Emerson Fittiipaldi and Nigel Mansell.

And then, it all fell apart.

At the conclusion of the 1995 season, Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Tony George removed the marquee Indy 500 out of the CART series, and placed it in his new IRL start up series, which would be raced by cars utilizing restricted technology only on oval circuits and featuring mainly American drivers. The split eliminated any of the prestige that the series had built up in previous years, and created two lesser products for auto racing enthusiasts out of a single great one.

Meanwhile, Jacques Villenueuve, the 1995 CART series champion who had become the first and only Canadian driver to win the Indianapolis 500, moved to F1 prior to the 1996 season, and took with him much of the interest that now teenage Canadians had in competitive racing. While he was winning races around the world, and competing for the F1 championship, the competing CART and IRL circuits sputtered, marred by lawsuits against each other, and the deaths of American driver Jeff Krosnoff and volunteer corner marshal Gary Avrin at the 1996 Molson Indy – the very same race that first gathered so much national interest in the sport in Canada.

After Villenueve won the F1 driver’s championship in 1997, the Champ Cars and IndyCars seemed little more than a memory to many of us, like the distant cousins of Formula One, always disappointing and bickering. Even when Villeneuve’s career took a turn for the worse following his championship season, and interest in F1 again began to wane due to the class structure of the engines, the death of promising Canadian driver Greg Moore at the California Speedway during the final race of the 1999 CART Championship Series affected us more than any previous moment on the circuit.

It was devastating. The fantastical spectacle that had attracted us as children turned tragic with a crushing moment of reality. The illusion was broken.

Life and death are serious business, and we become especially aware of the fragile fence that keeps these two elements separate when we’re reminded of it in a setting that is anything but serious. Car racing is supposed to be fun. Death is anything but. Stark contrasts concentrate feelings unlike any other phenomena, and it left many of us feeling conflicted to the idea of racing that risked one’s safety.

Following Moore’s death, CART remained more focused on its competition with the IRL than the competition on its circuit, effectively failing to resolve the feelings of its shaken fans. Lacking the central leadership of the IRL under Tony George, CART team owners were unable to agree on a new engine formula, with some hoping to adopt similar structures to the ones in place for the IRL (as a means of eventually unifying the two series), while others wanted to continue to develop smaller engines with more boost as a decidedly different form of racing.

At the Detroit race in 2001, the failure of team owners to work together for the greater good came to a head. Toyota accused Honda and Ford/Cosworth of illegally altering the pop-off valve, which controls the amount of boost pressure delivered by the turbocharger. Political nonsense and lawsuits ensued, resulting in an exodus from the series. The powerhouse Penske team made plans to depart immediately, Honda intended to leave at the end of the 2002 season, and Toyota planned to switch to the IRL for 2003.

The in-fighting contributed to CART’s eventual bankruptcy and resulted in an attempt by the remaining teams to re-brand the series as Champ Car in 2003. Their efforts were as effective as a drowning person flailing in a large body of water. It failed because the balance of power had already shifted. In addition to the open-wheel racing of the IRL, which would absorb Champ Car in 2008, NASCAR had supplanted open-wheel racing as the most popular auto racing sport in North America.

While the IRL originated with the idea of providing a “more even playing field” for racing teams by utilizing less expensive cars propelled by technologically limited engines, these restrictions were only successful in terms of being less of a failure than CART/Champ Car. The Indianapolis 500 as the marquee event of open-wheel racing in North America became a shell of its former self following the split. This was brought on by the failure of the IRL to recognize the Indy 500 as a competitive race first, and a cultural phenomenon second.

The contempt for the actual race is perhaps best evidenced by Tony George and Indianapolis Motor Speedway marketing director Bill Donaldson once telling auto sports writer Gordon Kirby:

We could run golf carts around here and still fill the place.

Evidently, they could not. Following the formation of the IRL, NASCAR’s Daytona 500 has consistently drawn more television viewers than the Indianapolis 500, and as a result more sponsorship dollars. The chain reaction continued with a talent drain, as top drivers and top driver names began leaving their respective open-wheel circuits for the more lucrative NASCAR.

After the IRL was finally permitted by law to use “IndyCar” in its title, it became the IndyCar Series, and has grown progressively away from the principles with which it was founded. Wealthy teams dominate the points, several foreign-born racers are now competing and nine of the races are contested through the streets of cities, and not on ovals. It’s actually quite similar to the CART series that it broke away from seventeen years ago.

This is good, but also maddening.

It’s good because the series of racing that attracted a great many of us to auto racing as a sport is making a comeback, but it’s frustrating because it took seventeen years of wandering the wilderness to realize something that fans knew all along: IndyCar racing was really entertaining as it was. The challenge for the most recent incarnation is to not only draw young fans just as the sport did more than two decades ago, but also bring back those estranged by the succession of alienating events – including the many Canadians now in their late twenties and early thirties – during the years between the split and now.

The IndyCar Series is in a better position to accomplish this than at any point over the last two decades. In addition to the emergence of Hinchcliffe – as both a talented driver and spokesperson for the sport – the series features a roster of young drivers that make the current product exciting while offering much hope for the future as well.

The ages of those on the starting grid of Sunday’s 2013 Indianapolis 500 have more in common with the guest list of a trendy nightclub than what we’d imagine to be the participants in a typical auto race. The list includes:

• Conor Daly (21-years-old);
• Carlos Munoz (21-years-old);
• Josef Newgarden (22-years-old);
• Graham Rahal (24-years-old);
• Simona de Silvestro (24-years-old);
• J.R. Hildebrand (25-years-old); and
• Marco Andretti (26-years-old).

As a means of introducing my interview with Hinchcliffe, I made a joke about him being willing to speak with anyone. Humor aside, there is a point to that. The younger racers are keenly aware of how important fan interaction, be it directly through social media or through media channels, is to not just their marketability as drivers, but also the sport that allows them that occupation.

As we learned from Hinchcliffe, it’s not a coincidence that Go Daddy, an internet domain registrar and web hosting company, sponsors the most internet-friendly personality on the circuit. Part of the racer’s off-course talents are found in his personality. This is every bit as marketable to a sponsor as it is to the entire sport.

Through technology, sports are more accessible today than ever before. As fans, we have smart phone applications feeding us results, websites offering us instant analysis, television networks broadcasting live events, and social media for us to share our opinions on all of the information we receive. It’s a wonderful time to be a sports fan.

However, I wonder to what degree this accessibility limits our exposure to new things. It’s easy to get to what we want to know, so easy in fact, that we needn’t toil through what we don’t. For a very long time IndyCar racing has been in the latter category, not the former. For all that the IndyCar Series has done wrong, it has absolutely done the right thing in using the tools of accessibility to shift that categorization.

Fortunately for them, they have a heck of a driver to spearhead that effort. Perhaps, the unrelated circumstances that had previously coincided to harm the sport are finally coming together to head in the right direction this time. Oddly enough, it still has something to do with the stars.

It all started two weeks ago during the Third Round at The Players Championship at Sawgrass. Tiger Woods decided to take a wood out of his bag – signifying to the crowd that he was going for the green on the par-five second hole – just as Sergio Garcia was taking his swing. The crowd cheered Woods’s decision, causing Garcia to slice his shot.

During a rain delay, Garcia vented some of his frustration while speaking with the Golf Channel:

Well, obviously Tiger was on the left and it was my turn to hit. He moved all the crowd that he needed to move, I waited for that. You do have a feel when the other guy is going to hit and right as I was in the top of the back-swing, he must have pulled a wood and everybody started screaming. So that didn’t help very much.

… and so it began.

Woods called Garcia a whiner, and when asked if he intended to apologize for the remark. He simply said, “No.”

Then, Garcia, presumably after memorizing lines from his favorite chapter of Sinbad’s Big Bad Book Of Snaps, told ESPN.com:

He called me a whiner. That’s probably right. It’s also probably the first thing he’s told you guys that’s true in 15 years. I know what he is like. You guys are finding out. He can and will beat me a lot of times but he is not going to step on me. I’m not afraid of him.

At first, it was fun to follow along with someone else’s minor drama. It was reminiscent of listening to your nana complain about the people in her neighborhood – an obvious overreaction, but whatever, it gave you a topic of conversation that wasn’t based in the death of her friends or the weather.

Unfortunately, Garcia had to ruin it all. On stage at the European Tour’s awards dinner, Garcia fielded a question in jest from the Golf Channel’s Steve Sands. The Spanish golfer was asked when he would have the American over for dinner.

Garcia’s reply:

We will have him round every night. We will serve fried chicken.

The comparisons to these comments from Fuzzy Zoeller have been both rife and apt:

I apologise for any offence that may have been caused by my comment on stage during The European Tour Players’ Awards dinner. I answered a question that was clearly made towards me as a joke with a silly remark, but in no way was the comment meant in a racist manner.

Make no mistake at all, it was a racist comment.

It doesn’t matter if it was overt racism or inherent racism that caused him to reinforce a negative stereotype based on race from both a literal and figurative stage, it’s still racism. Unlike Zoeller, Garcia doesn’t have the excuse – not a justification – of being from a past generation where jokes uttered by the powerful majority about stereotypes belonging to the discriminated minority weren’t considered to be as hurtful. Again, that’s not a defense for Zoeller’s comments from sixteen years ago, it’s understanding the source and therefore context of what he said.

Garcia is a 33-year-old man. He’s not from a distant generation where racism was tolerated. His comment was resolutely stupid – the type that would cause a dinner party between friends to break up, and those friendships to be questioned.

For those defending Garcia today, it’s not the same thing as if Woods was to make a crack about serving paella. While it wouldn’t have been advisable or very funny, such comments wouldn’t have carried the same weight. There’s a history of discrimination through stereotypes associated with the ethnic background of Woods that don’t exist for the Spaniard. We might not expect Garcia to fully understand that history, but we can definitely expect him to understand the difference between playful comments and hurtful ones.

Sports are really, really great. However, the more time you spend reading and writing about a topic, the greater the chance its ugly little cracks and cobwebs will begin to emerge. This is why, over time, the focus of writers and fans alike becomes embittered by the more negative aspects of sports. The cheating. The discrimination. The exploitation. The inequality. It all becomes overwhelming. We forget why sports are so great, and why they fascinated us long before we grew caustic to what they could offer. And so, that’s where The Week In Sports Happiness comes into play.

Every week, I’ll present the ten things that are making me happy from the world of sports. It might be a particular article, it could be a winning streak, it may even be an animated GIF. No matter what, it’s from sports, it made me feel good inside, and I hope it does the same for you.

Without further ado, sports the good:

1. Reunions

The relationship shared between the military and sports has always seemed strange to me. Fans and sports writers frequently use terminology associated with military exploits, while the military is often given a platform with which it can reinforce its importance – whether through pregame ceremonies or honorary camouflage jerseys – at sporting events.

How you feel about this association shouldn’t matter in the least when you watch this video:

This isn’t about the military. It’s about a little girl for whom circumstances – most likely rooted in noble intentions – have removed her father for an extended period of time and placed him in danger. That frightening absence was ended this past week, and the Tampa Bay Rays were able to facilitate its dramatic conclusion in a fashion that made the reunion that much more impactful.

It’s a beautiful, almost primal moment that reminds us how natural it is to love those who look after us with complete abandon. I’m glad that it was able to be played out on a large stage for us to see, if not for anything else than to remind us of how fortunate the majority of us are to have our loved ones in close proximity.

2. A Child’s Single-Mindedness

In seeking out the special moments from sports each week, it’s become increasingly apparent that the majority of the excellent things that sports have to offer involve children. It makes sense. Sports are essentially a game, and our fascination with these games is more often than not rooted in our own experiences feeling the thrills and agonies associated with sports at a young age.

After a successful season that saw them win a European trophy, and qualify for next year’s UEFA Champions League, the friends and families of Chelsea’s players gathered on the pitch following their last game to thank the crowd at Stamford Bridge, and say goodbye to the retiring Paulo Ferreira. As the defender addressed the fans, Josh Turnbull, the son of goalkeeper Ross Turnbull, decided to take advantage of the open space between him and the goal.

The crowd is so appreciative of little Turnball’s efforts that in addition to a wild cheer for his goal, they regal the kid with a “sign him up” chant. My favorite part of the video, though, is Turnbull’s celebration which consists of standing on the goal-line staring blankly ahead for a second before turning around to face everyone on the pitch and throw his hands in jubilation. Duplicate that, professionals.

3. Athletes Responding To Tragedy

Last week we featured Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp giving a disabled fan in the front row at AT&T Park the shirt off his back at the end of his team’s series with the San Francisco Giants. It was such a noble act – to which we were only made privy because of another fan quietly filming the moment – that even the assembled Giants supporters who witnessed it were appreciative.

Kemp is making it even more difficult for rival team’s fan bases to cheer against him, as the Oklahoma native has promised to donate $1,000 for every home run he hits between now and the All-Star break to relief efforts following the devastating tornado that recently ripped through the mid-West.

I’m giving $1000 for tonight’s HR and every HR until the All-Star break for the victims of my hometown in OKC. #PrayforOklahoma

— Matt Kemp (@TheRealMattKemp) May 21, 2013

For those cynical enough to question the motivation behind an athlete publicizing their generosity, Kemp’s commitment has caused others to follow suit. This is making it increasingly difficult for all of us not to hope that Matt Kemp hits all of the home runs over his next 51 games.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma City forward Kevin Durant is the only person not talking about his $1 million donation to the Oklahoma tornado disaster relief fund. The NBA superstar is often cited as the nicest guy in basketball, and with such an incredible display of generosity, it’s not difficult to understand why.

4. Mitchie Brusco’s 1080

This is 15-year-old skateboarder Mitchie Brusco performing the first 1080 in an X Games competition:

15-years-old!

Perhaps the most remarkable part of the high schooler’s MegaRamp run in Barcelona was the relative ease with which he landed his massive jump. He doesn’t just barely pull it off. Brusco looks fluid and relaxed while doing something as a 15-year-old that no other X-Games competitor has ever managed.

5. “If You Can’t Read It, Go To School”

For the second year in a row, Los Angeles Lakers forward Metta World Peace took to network news following his team’s departure from the NBA Playoffs to present the weather.

I’m not sure if the whole Metta World Peace shtick is designed to overcome the image he created for himself with poor behavior prior to the name change, or if it’s a social comment on our fascination with athlete superstars, but it’s pretty much the funniest thing ever.

6. The Ian Kinsler Slide

This is an incredibly bad slide from Ian Kinsler of the Texas Rangers:

It’s hilariously bad. So funny, in fact, that on it’s own it would easily be considered as one of the happiest moments from the past week. But far more important than Kinsler’s slide was his manager’s reaction.

Ron. Washington. Everyone.

7. A Multi-Layered Wind Bag

It ends up that foul smelling gasses emit from more than one of the orifices belonging to Skip Bayless, or so we will ourselves to believe. During ESPN’s First Take on Thursday, viewers heard a suspicious noise at the conclusion of a segment on Kevin Durant. It’s impossible to say for certain what the source of that noise was, but based on the following bits of evidence, we might embrace a theory.

First of all, we must admit that the noise in question, which some may refer to as a fart sound was made when Bayless was not on screen. However, prior to the large gaseous release sound there was a similar, albeit smaller noise made (at the 0:05 mark). This one happened while Bayless was on screen, right after he adjusted where he was sitting in his chair, obviously leaning to his left following the completion of his sentence.

This is followed by a rare look of shame on the face of Bayless, but not just any shame, it’s the shame of a man who passed gas while still attempting to hold in much more gas.

That is the look of a man whose valve was squeezed tightly before everything had been released.

So, when a much louder and longer sound is heard merely seconds later, you’ll forgive the assumptive reasoning that informs our naming of the culprit. Even without all this evidence, however, it’s far more fun to imagine that it was Bayless, and this is all that I need.

8. Successful Millionaires Bickering

During the Third Round at The Players Championship last weekend, Tiger Woods decided to take a wood, signifying to the crowd that he was going for the green on the par-five second hole just as Sergio Garcia was taking his swing. The crowd cheered Woods’s decision, causing Garcia to slice his shot.

During a rain delay, Garcia vented some of his frustration while speaking with the Golf Channel:

Well, obviously Tiger was on the left and it was my turn to hit. He moved all the crowd that he needed to move, I waited for that. You do have a feel when the other guy is going to hit and right as I was in the top of the backswing, he must have pulled a wood and everybody started screaming. So that didn’t help very much.

Woods called Garcia a whiner, and when asked if he intended to apologize for the remark. He simply said, no.

Then, Garcia, presumably fresh off reading his favorite chapter of Sinbad’s Big Bad Book Of Snaps told ESPN.com:

He called me a whiner. That’s probably right. It’s also probably the first thing he’s told you guys that’s true in 15 years. I know what he is like. You guys are finding out. He can and will beat me a lot of times but he is not going to step on me. I’m not afraid of him.

If this bitter feud persists, we can expect the respective mothers of the golfers to eventually be informed, and god only knows what might happen after that.

9. Defensive Tennis On Clay

During the Internazionali BNL d’Italia quarterfinal match up between Rafael Nadal and David Ferrer, this happened:

Three times it appeared as though Ferrer would have to wait to clinch the second set against Nadal, but his maximum effort defensive shots made defeat look impossible. In my mind, this is the very best that clay court tennis can offer.

Eventually, Nadal would go on to win the third set and by extension, the match. By then beating Tim Berdych in the semifinals, Nadal set up a memorable final against his old nemesis Roger Federer. As is his wont on clay, the Spaniard beat the greatest tennis player of all-time in straight sets. The tournament in Rome marked the ninth time that the duo have met in the final on clay, and every single time, Nadal has emerged as the winner.

This was merely the conclusion to a very eventful tournament.

10. A Matchstick Replica Of Yankee Stadium

More than the end result merely being incredibly awesome, there’s a wonderfully understated pride from Bill Becker for his 75,000 piece matchstick replica of Yankee Stadium. That pride isn’t in the devotion of time over four years of working on the project or even its exhibition at the real Yankee stadium and the resulting media attention.

Becker is most proud of his granddaughter “doing everything in her power and succeeding” in getting the Yankees to put the replica on display. In fact, during his interview with a television station in New York, the 87-year-old New Jersey native talks more about his grandchildren than his hobby.

It’s just a wonderful story of an older man putting his mind to something with which very few others would bother, and working hard over a long period of time to accomplish a goal. What makes the story endearing is the satisfaction he gains, not by the results of his devotion, but in the involvement of his own family in this little creation receiving the attention it deserves. It’s all so folksy, and American, and uniformly heart-warming.

While there is certainly some merit to believing such traits to be beneficial, we mostly elevated the glory of our menial tasks for the purpose of justifying our current state and forgetting the bad decisions that led us to physical labor as a livelihood. In addition to fooling ourselves in this manner, we’d mock office workers, imagining their professions to be less honorable than our own.

“How can they feel any measure of self-worth?” we’d ask ourselves.

Ten years later, as part of my job, I would embed a YouTube clip of a Callaway Golf executive putting a golf ball down two sets of staggered stairs and into a cup. If my former co-workers could only see me now.

A seat at the 19th hole for Shane Bacon of the Devil Ball golf blog.

If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away.

- Henry David Thoreau

There is an eleven-year-old girl to whom I look up. Her name is Keila Penner, and she lives in Lachine, Quebec, a fifteen minute drive from Montreal. Penner is a fan of the Ottawa Senators, which is somewhat uncommon, considering that the franchise has only been around since 1992, and she lives near Montreal where the Canadiens play hockey. Les Habitants have been a professional hockey franchise since 1909, and have won the Stanley Cup 24 times, which is more than any other team.

Outsiders often compare Montreal’s devotion to Le Bleu-Blanc-Rouge to a religion, but there is no denomination of followers so fervently aligned, while simultaneously critical and suspicious of every edict that comes to be promoted as truth. La Sainte-Flanelle are more like a sometimes-benevolent dictatorship of culture. After all, there is no blind faith in the team, fans demand to see evidence instead of trusting in the unseen. However, there is uniformity in the following.

Or, at least assumed uniformity.

With the Canadiens and Senators set to battle in a first round playoff battle, Penner’s school decided to hold a “Habs Day” event in which students were encouraged to dress in the local hockey team’s gear. Not only did Penner wear a Senators jersey to school that day, she refused to take it off when confronted by teachers. She was, in turn, sent home by the school.

That is awesome.

It’s not awesome because someone prefers the Senators to the Canadiens. It’s awesome because an eleven-year-old girl who defines herself, at least in part, as a fan of one team, wasn’t bullied by a majority into compromising that definition. The hockey jersey itself is relatively unimportant, but the principle of standing up to authority, and not following the lead of the majority is one to which I, personally, ascribe.

I’m a grown man, and I don’t know if I would stick to my principles under the demands of a similar authority figure to the one against which Penner stood her ground. And she’s eleven-years-old!

After learning of Penner’s strength of character, Senators owner Eugene Melnyk drove her and her family to Ottawa in a limousine to watch Game Four of the Ottawa and Montreal series from his private box. The Senators won the game, taking a commanding 3-1 series lead, and setting up their eventual series victory the following game.

A lot of time has been spent on this blog attempting to reconcile the amount of time we spend obsessing over sports with its value, or seeming lack thereof. It’s comforting to find stories like this, in which the devotion to a team has the ability to teach and reinforce lasting principles that the world beyond sports fandom values.

I also love that it’s sports, in this instance, that allows us to learn a valuable lesson and gain encouragement from an eleven-year-old. Keep on doing what you’re doing, Keila.

Stick tap to Chris Lund at Inside The Senate.

Grade school crushes, much like sports, were of the utmost importance to us as children, but as we matured, our relationships to both altered. Crushes changed into attraction, and sports – depending on how much you’ve managed develop – went from being an obsession to a distraction, an outlet to plug in and recharge.

Nonetheless, despite our supposed level maturity, we occasionally revert back to grade school crushes and attaching too much importance on the outcomes of sporting events. Typically, this leads to disaster in our personal relationships and levels of disappointment to which we were previously unaccustomed.

Fear not. There is a safe way to regress back to childhood when crushes were everything, and the results of games were meaningful. All you have to do is click on the Vines below, and wherever it stops will inform your destiny as a sports fan.

First up is the location where your favorite team will play:

Next, you’ll have to find out what type of fan you are to become:

Finally, it’s time to find that special someone, and decide who will be your favorite player for the rest of eternity:

Thank you to Miranda McGuire for help with the Vines and BuzzFeed for the idea.

In addition to YouTube dunk montage maestros, college basketball coaches and recruiters focused themselves on Wiggins for the better part of the last two years, as he went about dominating the high school circuit as a small forward for Huntington Prep in West Virginia. The public, at least the portion that concerns itself with where high school sports stars attend college, was rabid with anticipation for the slightest hint of interest from the player.

Despite the amphitheatre of attention that this afforded the 18-year-old, Wiggins ended what seemed like an entire era of speculation on Tuesday afternoon with a whisper, or more accurately, a tweet. Avoiding the bright lights attached to television cameras and the claustrophobic conditions of a pressing media throng, the Vaughan, Ontario native quietly announced to his family, friends, teammates and a single reporter from a Huntington newspaper that he would be attending the University of Kansas next season. The rest of us would find out from the Twitter account of Grant Traylor, the one journalist with access.

Kansas is a somewhat surprising destination given that his parents both attended Florida State as student athletes, and his close friend and high school teammate, Xavier Rathan-Mayes, had already committed to the university where both their fathers had played together on the basketball team. However, in the days leading up to his commitment, Kansas emerged as a favored option among several pundits.

While his decision will even out the playing field in NCAA Basketball next season, it will most likely be on a very short term basis – the shortest term possible, in fact. While many will jump to conclusions that the relatively quiet announcement from Wiggins is evidence of a grounded individual, looking to avoid the spotlight, the truth is that the subtlety of a private signing is more fitting than all of the hype surrounding the commitment of what will most assuredly end up being a single year to the Jayhawks.

No matter what Wiggins says, just like every other college basketball player who spends one year in the NCAA before heading to the NBA, he has little or no interest in going to college. The only reason he will attend the University of Kansas next year is because of a pesky rule that requires players to be 19 years old with at least one NBA season elapsed since the player’s graduation – or when he would have graduated – from high school. The rule was instituted in 2007, four years after LeBron James dodged college basketball and went straight from high school to the professional ranks.

It’s a rule of convenience that governs the future of Andrew Wiggins.

The NCAA has spoken out against it with the veneer of the suggestion that the rule forces student athletes with no interest in attending college to go through the process anyway. It seems that Mark Emmert, the president of the NCAA agrees with me that one-and-done players have little interest in attending college classes.

It suits the NCAA to keep young athletes playing college basketball under their purview for as long as possible. As we’ve looked at in the past, unpaid servitude is a rather lucrative enterprise for those being served. Last year, Emmert appeared on an episode of Costas Tonight on NBC Sports where he derided the one-and-done rule yet again.

It makes a travesty of the whole notion of student as an athlete. It simply creates the wrong type of environment for us. If you’re coming to us to be a collegiate athlete, we want you to be a collegiate athlete.

This is because the notion of a student as an athlete is already so pure? The wrong type of athlete under this scenario is one whose length of servitude lasts only a year instead of four.

In the meantime, the NBA benefits from its relationship with the NCAA for two reasons. It doesn’t have to spend as much money on the infrastructure necessary for a Minor League system to develop a large roster of athletes when potential professional athletes can play unpaid in college until they’re 22-years-old, and a good understanding of individual talent can be had.

The NBA also benefits from its best players already being popular before they’ve even played a single game in the league. As Allen Barra pointed out in an article for The Atlantic on this very issue, it’s not coincidental that “the boom era of the NBA began in 1978 when Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were drafted, respectively, by the rival LA Lakers and Boston Celtics—after having faced each other in the highest-rated NCAA final up to that time between Michigan State and Indiana State.”

It’s all a gross and disgusting charade played by authorities who love the ideals of a free market only so long as it’s free for them and not those whose exploitation is necessary for making money. With his announcement today, Andrew Wiggins becomes the latest victim of what can increasingly be described as a cartel on basketball talent, an implicit agreement that benefits everyone but the people actually doing the work.

That’s why the setting for today’s announcement in a private high school gym was far more fitting than anything that the hype might have suggested.

Sports are really, really great. However, the more time you spend reading and writing about a topic, the greater the chance its ugly little cracks and cobwebs will begin to emerge. This is why, over time, the focus of writers and fans alike becomes embittered by the more negative aspects of sports. The cheating. The discrimination. The exploitation. The inequality. It all becomes overwhelming. We forget why sports are so great, and why they fascinated us long before we grew caustic to what they could offer. And so, that’s where The Week In Sports Happiness comes into play.

Every week, I’ll present the ten things that are making me happy from the world of sports. It might be a particular article, it could be a winning streak, it may even be an animated GIF. No matter what, it’s from sports, it made me feel good inside, and I hope it does the same for you.

Without further ado, sports the good:

1. Inclusion

This is the second time in as many weeks that the very first item being mentioned in this column is something that the supporters of Major League Soccer’s Portland Timbers have done. Last week, it was the team hosting 8-year-old cancer survivor Atticus Lane-Dupre and the rest of his Green Machine soccer team for a scrimmage at Jeld-Wen Field, for which more than 3,000 people showed up. This week, it’s their large scale show of support for the gay community with an enormous banner and crowd-made rainbow in the stands, independently planned by the club’s fans.

What’s so wonderful about this is that it reaffirms the notion that sports are not about who you are as much as what you can do. It includes rather than excludes. This outpouring of acceptance on Sunday afternoon came less than a month after Timbers player Will Johnson was verbally abused with a gay slur by a member of the San Jose Earthquakes during a match in Portland.

The Earthquakes moved quickly into damage control mode, aligning themselves with the You Can Play Project, an organization whose mission it is to eradicate homophobia in sports. As is too often the case, San Jose’s involvement with You Can Play only came as a response to an incident of discrimination. What the Timbers fans did on Sunday was more organic, and therefore a far more powerful statement that attempted to correct the poor behavior of others, and express that they won’t stand for social inequality.

2. Promotion And Reaction

With promotion and relegation between a nation’s top flight league and their lesser division, soccer is wonderfully well-distributed in terms of excitement levels leading up to the end of a season. In England, the nPower Championship is the division below the Barclays Premier League, and at the end of each season, the top two teams receive automatic advancement to the next level while the next four clubs in the table compete in a mini-tournament to decide the third team to replace the bottom three teams in the BPL.

After 90 minutes of the playoff semi final second leg between Watford and Leicester, the two teams remained even with a 2-2 tie on aggregate. Then, late into stoppage time, Leicester was awarded a penalty that if scored, would knock Watford out of the playoff and end their chances of making the Premiership.

That’s when this happened:

However, this wasn’t the only fantastic bit of reaction. Sky Sports News in England doesn’t show actual matches, but they will assign reporters around the country on any given matchday, and go to them live to update scores and stories. Sky Sports commentator Johnny Phillips was in Watford when all of this happened. His reaction was almost as exciting as the actual play.

3. Every Single Thing That Stephen Curry Does

The Golden State Warriors are a likeable team. They’re young. They shoot a lot. They hustle. To neutral observing basketball fans, they’re a very fun squad to watch. And this was the way it seemed even before Golden State was matched up with the San Antonio Spurs in their Western Conference semi final playoff series. In terms of deliciousness, the Warriors are crème brûlée to the Spurs’ vegetable medley.

Cheering for the San Antonio Spurs is a bit like cheering for taxes. They’re a very good basketball team, but in the cruelest way imaginable. There is little joy in watching San Antonio break down another team through aggressive defense and the most workmanlike offense in the league. They’re very much the opposite of what Golden State offers.

And a large part of what Golden State offers is Stephen Curry. Everything he does seems to work out, whether it’s going on a third quarter tear despite injured ankles, or having fun with his daughter and posting it through Vine.

4. Matt Kemp The Best

Following the final game of the series, Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp provided the perfect counterbalance to such agressive nonsense on the part of the more mouth-breathing elements of the respective fan bases. After a disabled fan’s father caught the attention of third base coach Tim Wallach, Kemp was told about his young admirer, seated near the field.

The outfielder went over to sign his baseball, and ended up giving him his cleats and quite literally, the shirt off his back. Even the cynical Giants fans nearby couldn’t help but applaud Kemp’s contribution, which was done rather earnestly, out of the goodness of his heart rather than for any ulterior purposes relating to publicity.

5. The Television Consumer Freedom Act of 2013

On Thursday, Senator John McCain introduced The Television Consumer Freedom Act of 2013. The bill mainly relates to incentivizing the business practices of the television industry – which McCain refers to as an “injustice being inflicted on the American people” – to offer more consumer friendly options. However, the bill also calls for the repeal of television blackouts for sporting events held at publicly financed stadiums that don’t sell tickets to capacity.

Blackouts have long been an accepted bit of punishment for the local fan base who doesn’t support its club in person – mainly in the NFL. McCain’s statement, which referred to the practice as being “unconscionable to deny those taxpayers who paid for it the ability to watch the games on television when they would otherwise be available,” acts as a reminder of how unreasonable it is to block accessibility to a product for which payment  - at least in part – has already been made.

While the bill may not extend to online access, this principle does. If this bill is passed, it will be interesting to see if and how it affects the online television packages offered by all the major pro sports leagues which blackout regional games as a means of pushing users toward watching local teams via television, and therefore cable packages.

6. Mike Keenan’s Undeniable Charm Meets Swirling Cameras And Russian Montage

It was announced on Monday that Mike Keenan, who has coached eight different NHL teams over a 25 year career, will be travelling to Russia next to take control of the KHL’s Metallurg Magnitogorsk. This awkward video was how the team chose to announce their hiring:

However, I do love how Iron Mike says “YouTube” as though it’s a Russian television network. Maybe this is all charming to the Metallurg supporters. Perhap’s Keenan’s accent will play as well in Russia as Teitur Thordarson’s played in Canada.

7. Role Players

The Chicago Bulls are unlikely to last much longer against the Miami Heat in their Eastern Conference semi final playoff series. However, Joakim Noah was able to contribute at least one indelible image during the third quarter of their Game Three match-up.

As Chris Bosh and Mario Chalmers began arguing during a stoppage in play, Noah slid into the frame, clapped his hands and cheered on the teammate-versus-teammate bickering. Most commentators would insist that Noah is the type of player who is dearly beloved by his own team’s fans, but despised by every other fan base. Personally, I love players who have the ability to mentally affect others by lodging themselves under the opposing team’s skin. It’s even better when a player completely embraces such a useful role while still contributing elsewhere, just as Noah does.

Bonus awesomeness: Watch LeBron James give Noah the briefest of sideways glances.

8. Recreational Satisfaction

Someone tried to tell me that the greatest feeling in pick up sports is blocking a shot in basketball. I was hesitant to agree, mainly because striking out an opposing batter in baseball feels pretty good, too.

However, it got me thinking about the recreational sports we play and the one element from each that makes us feel really good. I think it has to be something that we’re not able to do easily. For instance, I’m a terrible pitcher, so striking out a batter is a special moment of unexpected joy for me. Whereas, a couple summers ago, I played beach volley ball, and as someone of above average height participating with those of average height, I almost felt a sense of guilt spiking and blocking opponents.

These feelings are obviously different when you step outside of casual pick up games or recreational sports into something more competitive, but I think those special moments of joy that participating in sports bring are actually really personal and dependent on one’s own individual abilities, with the most unlikely outcome being the most satisfactory. Or maybe, that’s just my own personal preference.

9. Epic Comebacks

I’m sorry, Toronto Maple Leafs fans. The sympathy a great many of us feel for you today is testament to what an astounding comeback the Boston Bruins orchestrated to win Game Seven of their first round match-up in overtime on Monday night.

The Bruins were down 4-1 with less than eleven minutes remaining in the game, 4-2 with less than two minutes remaining in the game and 4-3 with less than a minute remaining in the game before Patrice Bergeron tied it up in regulation, and then scored the winner in overtime. This happened after the Maple Leafs came back in the series from being down 3-1 to the massive favorites to force Game Seven in Boston.

A week ago, I wrote about how the intensity of the NHL Playoffs marks the most definitive difference between regular season schedule and playoff games, which is greater in hockey than in any other of the major North American team sports. What I failed to mention was that this intensity is exponentially increased by sudden death overtime, which, when it occurs in the deciding game of the series, is quite likely the most exciting and nerve-wracking thing in all of sports. We witnessed that on Monday night, and it was fantastic.

Well, fantastic for some of us.

10. The Tweets Of Mark Fitzpatrick, Super Fan

]]> http://blogs.thescore.com/fanatico/2013/05/14/the-week-in-sports-happiness-5/feed/ 2 http://blogs.thescore.com/fanatico/2013/05/13/monday-media-culpa-rip-player-quotes-and-game-summaries/ http://blogs.thescore.com/fanatico/2013/05/13/monday-media-culpa-rip-player-quotes-and-game-summaries/#comments Mon, 13 May 2013 17:49:49 +0000 Dustin Parkes http://blogs.thescore.com/fanatico/2013/05/13/monday-media-culpa-rip-player-quotes-and-game-summaries/ I don’t really think about it all that much, but I’ve spent most of my life being obsessed with sports. I come to this realization from time to time when I reflect back on my childhood, my adolescence, my teenage years, my early twenties, and then yesterday or the day before, and sports are always there. When I was a kid, I remember waiting with controlled anxiety for the newspaper to be delivered. Upon it’s arrival, I’d dismiss the rest of the paper, isolate the Sports section, and unfold it on the living room floor, where I’d lean over it on bended knee, a supplicant to the gods who determined the previous night’s results.

These days, I’m a little more well-rounded, but I still read about sports more than any other topic. There’s no longer a single religious observance, though. I’m aware of the night’s happenings as they occur thanks to websites, Twitter and mobile applications. I read articles, check scores, watch coverage of games, and even communicate with other fans all over the world via social media to learn new perspectives and gain insight. What I don’t do is wait with anything approaching anticipation for the game summaries that I used to worship.

I already have the information.

It took a funny moment during the World Series in 2011 to help me realize this. Following a Game Two defeat in which the St. Louis Cardinals blew a 1-0 lead in the ninth inning to lose 2-1 to the Texas Rangers, a large portion of the veterans on the team had no interest in speaking with the media. Most notable in his absence was Albert Pujols, who made an unfortunate error at first base that allowed Texas to put two runners in scoring position before they went ahead for good.

Several members of the media covering the series were outraged, writing columns that evening not about the dramatic come-back victory by the Rangers, but on the topic of lacking leadership in the Cardinals club house, what accountability means, and how baseball players who deny their responsibilities are the worst sort of athletes in the world. Most offended among the writers following the St. Louis no-show was Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports

There it was, an empty locker flanked by an empty chair to match the emptiness in the air. At the center of it was a cutoff throw on which Pujols whiffed. The ball slipped away, allowing what would be the winning run to advance into scoring position. Pujols mimicked the ball, showering, dressing and dashing before the clubhouse doors opened.

Passan continued.

Until it’s not part of Pujols’ job description – and with the media money that helps keep Major League Baseball afloat and Pujols’ salary stratospheric, it is – it’s his responsibility to protect his teammates from having to swallow an excessive portion of that grief, especially when much of it is on him. Leaders do that.

It was one of those moments when you read the expression of an extremely heartfelt perspective that completely convinces you of the alternative viewpoint. It ends up that I couldn’t possibly care less about what Albert Pujols might have said following a game that he lost. And furthermore, what possible insight could be gained from reading a game summary that was so dependent on athlete quotes to fill out its template?

In the age of media trained athletes combined with instant and widespread access to the narrative of a game while the story is being told, the game summary appears to be little more than a fossil representing a dated process dependent on tradition, rather than providing anything of use to a sports fan. That’s not to suggest that there might be a method for delivering an informative recap of a game to those who missed it, it’s just that the current tried-and-true approach is severely lacking due to its failure to adapt to what’s progressively becoming – pardon the pun – a whole new game.

Blocking progress in this case, seems to be the writer’s archaic idea of his or her role as an intermediary between sports and fans. We gain a glimpse of this attitude from Passan’s expressed sense of entitlement to the song and dance of athletes and their quotes.

What keeps professional sports “afloat” and athlete salaries “stratospheric” isn’t Passan’s coverage. It’s the public’s interest in the game and the relatively small cost that a lot of people can pay to satisfy their curiosity over seeing who the best is at a particular game. Yes, the media can shape and bend that interest, but their relationship to the game itself is like a waiter’s to what he’s serving.

Think of the infrastructure of professional sports leagues, including the talented athletes, as a highly skilled chef at a popular restaurant. In this analogy, the meals that the chef creates are the games. The media then acts as the server, delivering plates of food to the customer, or in this case, information to actual sports fans. If, from time to time, the waiter doesn’t feel as though he’s getting enough information from the chef to properly deliver that plate of food to the customer, it’s too bad, but the chef owes nothing to the server. His duty is to the customer.

For the past several years, the waiter has been necessary for delivering the food. However, the way we consume food at restaurants has been changing. There are now options outside of the waiter’s delivery method to receive what the chef is offering. The waiter now has to offer something of benefit to diners in order to remain relevant in his or her position, instead of merely pouting over the change in restaurant dynamics.

So, where do we go from here?

There isn’t an easy solution, at least there isn’t a template as simple as the one for the current game summary: Paragraph isolating single event, explain how single event acts as a microcosm for the game (possibly season), insert player quotes to support the opening paragraph, and then end on a note that reaffirms original idea, but subtly muses that there may be some ambiguity about everything in the end. It’s not easy to serve two masters, and this is what writing about a game after it happens is mainly about. It has to be appealing to those who watched the game, but also informative to those who didn’t see it.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed a change in how I watch television programming. First of all, I typically watch episodes when it’s most convenient for me instead of according to the broadcast schedule, but more importantly, I often find myself actively seeking out reviews and criticism of individual episodes immediately after I’ve viewed them. This normally brings me to the AV Club’s TV Club where the team of writers dedicated to television coverage go beyond merely providing plot summaries to discuss themes and character motivation, and present ideas about what they’ve just seen.

Generally, sports writers working a beat have a distinct advantage over art critics in terms of accessibility to their human subjects, but instead of procuring information that provides insight, they seem to be content with the unspoken game that sees them use token questions to elicit mundane responses that then get treated to an undeserved level of importance in the game story. I feel as though the focus on the human subjects is often done to the detriment of things that are actually interesting. Perhaps there’s something to be learned from the television writers who treat the show as the subject instead of the performers.

It’s easy for me to suggest trying something different, when I don’t have to go to eighty games a season and derive something interesting for my readership from each one. I also don’t have to develop relationships with players who have also come to expect the media’s coverage to be in a certain manner. However, as a lifelong sports-obsessed fan, I’ve seen the transition that I’ve made in terms of the information that I consume, and I presume that I’m not the only one. I believe that there’s value to be had by talking to athletes and by writing about a game that has just happened.

Unfortunately,this potential isn’t being consistently realized by current methods. The  immediacy and accessibility of sports data calls for a necessary adaptation to the way sports stories are presented. There aren’t any more eleven-year-old boys and girls waiting at home to read about what happened the night before. So, why are articles still being written as though there are?

A matter of days before his first Midnight Madness practice at UCLA, the 6’8″ forward tore his ACL in a game of pickup hoops. He was told by doctors that the injury wouldn’t allow him to walk properly, let alone pursue a career playing basketball. However, he persevered through a redshirt year of rehab and emerged as a capable substitute in his freshman season. His sophomore campaign saw him named to the PAC-10 first team. It was an honor he’d repeat in his junior year, along with being named UCLA’s Most Valuable Player.

As impressive as his turnaround was, it was all just a lead up to O’Bannon’s senior year in which he led the Bruins to the 1995 NCAA Basketball Championship, collecting multiple honors along the way including yet another place in the PAC-10 first team, a consensus nod as a first team All-American, the aforementioned PAC-10 Player of the Year, and the USBWA College Player of the Year award. It was a successful enough season to make his name not only known to the majority of sports fans in a Canadian city more than 2,500 miles away from where he played College Basketball, but also actively coveted as the face of their new NBA franchise.

O’Bannon was eventually selected ninth overall by the New Jersey Nets. He was largely ineffective as a professional: too small to play the post, not quick enough to play the perimeter. He spent two seasons in the NBA, was traded twice and released. He toured around Europe, playing basketball in Spain, Greece and Poland. He even played a season in Argentina before retiring from professional basketball. From there, he worked as a car salesman, becoming the dealership’s marketing director before finishing the degree he started at UCLA.

Now, he leads a comfortable, but not extravagant life with his wife and three children, far removed from the glory days of the past. It might therefore be considered surprising that it is at this stage in his life that O’Bannon stands to make a greater impact on college sports in the United States than any athlete before him by forever altering how amateur athletics are defined in the country.

On July 21st, 2009, representatives for O’Bannon filed an antitrust lawsuit in federal court, alleging that former college football and basketball players are illegally denied a share of profits made by the NCAA through the sale of their image in DVDs, video games, photographs, apparel and other material. O’Bannon claims that the waiver college athletes sign handing over their names and images to the NCAA is a contract without negotiation. According to the lawsuit, when the NCAA sells a player’s likeness, they are conspiring with the purchaser to set the value of that likeness at zero, when it could potentially be worth more on the open market.

To read quotes from O’Bannon at the time, it seems all so simple.

I’ve always been one to wonder why former student athletes weren’t compensated for their games on television. The NCAA is making money off of DVDs and old reruns with people like me in it. Hey, I’m no longer in college. Something is wrong here.

When the NCAA tournament comes around, every year, the old games always seem to be on some classic sports channel. Someone will say, “Ed, I saw your games last night on TV. How much are you getting for royalties?” When I say “I’m not,” they look at me like something is seriously wrong. That’s really what this is about.

O’Bannon agreed to be the lead plaintiff after being approached by Sonny Vaccaro, a former shoe-marketing guru with Nike, Reebok and Adidas. Vaccaro has been an outspoken critic of the NCAA, even while offering sponsorship deals to universities and athletic conferences as a representative of the shoe companies. He even went so far as to volunteer his services as an unpaid consultant to the D.C. law firm that’s representing O’Bannon.

Other former student athletes, like former Nebraska quarterback Sam Keller and the great Oscar Robertson, have since joined with O’Bannon in the hope of bringing a class action lawsuit against the NCAA and their co-defendants – EA Sports. This is a tremendously important possibility because, individually, athletes aren’t likely to make incredibly large amounts of money off of image sales, but together, the total sum they might be entitled to would be enough to drastically alter the way that the NCAA operates.

While a hearing for the class certification will begin on June 20th, the plaintiffs have already won a major victory in the case. On January 29th, a federal judge in California ruled that O’Bannon et al. could amend their claim to include current and former athletes as members of a potential class action suit. The inclusion of current NCAA basketball and football players, who unlike former players have their likeness represented in contemporary video games by their uniform number, height, weight, and birthplace, means a drastic increase to a potential payout of damages because of the four year statute of limitations on anti-trust cases that would have limited how much former athletes might gain.

In addition, the suit was also extended to cover live broadcasts of sporting events, further lengthening the list of those potentially affected by damages from the NCAA and video game manufacturers to include television networks and the athletic conferences that sell broadcast rights. Despite being a nonprofit organization that doesn’t have to pay taxes because of its association with higher education, the NCAA’s earnings are comparable to a large corporation, as evidenced by the 14-year, $10.8 billion contract with CBS and Turner Broadcasting to televise the men’s basketball tournament. This single deal, which was announced in 2010, distributes at least $740-million annually to NCAA member colleges.

If the lawsuit could be likened to a bundle of dynamite, January’s ruling added a thermonuclear war head. We now wait for the June hearing to see if it will be deployed.

To summarize, the athletes’ lawyers are seeking a portion of the revenues that the NCAA and Division I schools and conferences have gotten from TV contracts and video game sales since 2005. Most analysis suggests that the plaintiffs would be looking for a 50-50 split of the revenue from television sales and a third of the money earned through video games. If the plaintiffs win the June hearing and a class action suit is tried, a decision in their favor would force the NCAA and those who have made money off of its product to pay billions of dollars in damages.

Perhaps more important than dollars exchanging hands to sports fans is that a decision in the plaintiff’s favor could also force an unfair system to become more equitable. The NCAA doesn’t pay athletes a share of its profits on the basis of maintaining their amateur status. There are few issues in sports more enraging than the false virtues of amateurism, a value that the NCAA specifically depends on to exploit the entertainment value that student-athletes provide.

In the past, I’ve written about the origin of our strange worship of the Olympic ideal, which the briefest bit of critical thinking reveals to be born out of the ulterior motives of the privileged.

By the end of the 19th Century, the athletic abilities of the working class threatened the establishment. For decades, those in power had promoted athletic endeavors as a means of keeping their contemporary plebeians healthy and occupied, all while enjoying exclusive competitions among themselves which they believed, in their arrogance, to be at the highest level of sporting skill.

When working class athletes began proving themselves to be equal or superior to the privileged, French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin created the modern Olympic games – along with its regulations differentiating between amateurs and professionals – so as to keep out the hard-working riff-raff and celebrate the accomplishments of the socially and financially well-to-do.

If the upper class was going to lose its stranglehold on athletic supremacy, it could at least grasp onto an imagined moral high ground as consolation. Under the guise of promoting well-roundedness as a virtue through the original Greek ideal, the leaders of the modern Olympic revival ultimately reinforced the merits of their own status. After all, the aristocratic athlete was the only athlete who could logistically afford to maintain their amateur status.

Exclusion is one thing, servitude is another. The difference between these two negative phenomena is what makes the NCAA even more grotesque than the manipulating sports aristocracy of the past. Where de Coubertin embraced amateurism as a practice for his social class, the NCAA imposes it on young athletes. The supposed virtues of amateurism are made somewhat more acceptable when the ideals are embraced by someone who actually wants to be an amateur. It become exponentially more distasteful when amateurism is imposed on young athletes by a party whose financial well being is dependent on the actual laborers not being paid.

In addition to exploiting the athletes, the NCAA has gotten away with this by exploiting the public’s perception of amateurism, and the sentiment we attach to it. When we think of NCAA scandals, we remember individual cases of athletes receiving financial compensation to attend a particular university. We somehow imagine there to be some positive aspect to the pursuit of an amateur ideal, but if there is, it’s not based in reason or law. Meanwhile, the entire practice of the NCAA remains the biggest quiet scandal in sports.

While vehemently arguing against the plaintiff’s motions in court, the NCAA has largely been quiet outside of it. Any argument that they contrive against compensating their athletes depends on reinforcing the same sentiment or being wilfully ignorant to the fact that student athletes are worth more to their universities than a mere scholarship.

Ultimately, the worst case scenario for an NCAA university is that will have to either stop profiting from students or start paying them. How does such a scenario remain shocking?

If the NCAA doubts the value of their athletes’ reach, they only need to look at the television and video game contracts, or remember back to that NBA draft in Toronto, when fans of a team who hadn’t played a single game yet already knew the name of Ed O’Bannon. It’s a name the NCAA is even more familiar with right now.

If the language we use to describe this event enters the realm of hyperbole, it’s not merely a coincidence. It’s all part of the charade. It’s part of the ritual we use to fully immerse ourselves into the distraction. This also includes the morbid: he murdered that ball; they’re killing him out there; that crossover left him for dead. The use of such terms seems silly and grotesque when serious incidents awaken us from the suspension of our belief and the distraction that we willingly allow while watching sports.

Toronto Blue Jays pitcher J.A. Happ was hit in the head by a line drive and taken off the field on a stretcher with one out in the second inning of his team’s eventual 6-4 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday night at Tropicana Field. The last half of that sentence seems very unimportant.

The ball, after leaving the bat of Desmond Jennings, caromed off the left side of Happ’s head and went all the way into the bullpen in foul territory. The blow knocked the pitcher to the ground, where he held his head in frightening agony. The ballpark went silent. Trainers, paramedics and medical officials rushed to where Happ was laying on the ground. Players and coaches stood on the field and in the dugouts, looking almost suppliant with concern.

As fans at the stadium and at home watched the aftermath and recalled the unique sound of the baseball hitting the pitcher, the vicariousness that baseball offers was extended in a different direction. Instead of us living out home runs and strike outs through our favorite team, it was the players on both squads who stood as representatives for our own emotions. Visibly shaken, the look of confusion, fear and sadness on their faces made us all aware of the seriousness of the situation, and perhaps allowed us to better understand our own feelings.

After ten minutes, Happ was strapped to a backboard, lifted onto a stretcher and wheeled off through an opening behind home plate. Amidst the strange applause that is customary when an injured athlete leaves the field, court, or rink of play, Happ raised his right hand and waved to acknowledge the crowd’s support. The cheers grew louder, no longer customary, but now out of relief that the player was at least conscious.

I always feel a bit conflicted writing about potentially tragic circumstances when they occur in sports. As emotional as an incident like this renders us, I remain unable to escape the feeling that whatever is happening is only receiving an additional dose of magnification because of its particular stage. I feel a sense of guilt over giving one particular moment of tragedy more attention than others simply due to who is involved.

However, there is something that is especially jarring about frightening circumstances occurring on the field of play that goes beyond the sadness that’s present elsewhere. We spend a lot of time on this blog exploring our relationship with sports, often coming to the conclusion that it’s at best an important distraction for many of us.

When we’re taken out of that distraction and reminded of reality in the brutal way that we were with J.A. Happ, it’s especially impactful, like being jolted out of sleep by electricity instead of gently woken up as part of the natural conclusion to our rest. Injury, life and death are serious business, and it becomes especially serious when we’re reminded of it in a setting that is anything but. Stark contrasts concentrate feelings unlike any other phenomena.

Happ was admitted to hospital, and according to the last report, was in stable condition. We’ll await further information, all while hoping for the very best for J.A. Happ.

Update (10:15 AM ET): A hospital spokesperson said that Happ was admitted to hospital on Tuesday in fair condition, and updated to good on Wednesday morning. The pitcher released the following statement:

I’m in good spirits, I definitely appreciate the support of the baseball community. It’s been overwhelming the messages and kind words I’ve been getting. I just want to thank everyone for that and I look forward to getting back out there soon.

After more tests, it’s expected that Happ will be released from the hospital later on Wednesday afternoon.

Update (12:15 PM ET): Happ left Bayfront Medical Centre in St. Petersburgh on Wednesday afternoon, using crutches with a bandage on his head. According to Barry Davis of Sportsnet, there was some concern last night that Happ had injured his right knee in addition to the head trauma.

Sports are really, really great. However, the more time you spend reading and writing about a topic, the greater the chance its ugly little cracks and cobwebs will begin to emerge. This is why, over time, the focus of writers and fans alike becomes embittered by the more negative aspects of sports. The cheating. The discrimination. The exploitation. The inequality. It all becomes overwhelming. We forget why sports are so great, and why they fascinated us long before we grew caustic to what they could offer. And so, that’s where The Week In Sports Happiness comes into play.

Every week, I’ll present the ten things that are making me happy from the world of sports. It might be a particular article, it could be a winning streak, it may even be an animated GIF. No matter what, it’s from sports, it made me feel good inside, and I hope it does the same for you.

Without further ado, sports the good:

1. Doing Stuff For Sick Kids (Part One)

The missed matches were more than made up for when his team beat the Timbers 10-9 in front of 3,000 singing and chanting fans who came to help make Lane-Dupre’s wish come true. The storybook day ended as it should, with the boy scoring his team’s winning goal in the final minute of play.

I remember playing out scenarios like this in my imagination as a child. I absolutely love that Lane-Dupre, a kid forced to suffer by randomness and genetics, could enjoy the thrill of a fantasy in real life through the efforts of others. No one could possibly appreciate this more, and its evident by the almost stunned unbelievability of his actions in the video above.

2. Doing Stuff For Sick Kids (Part Two)

Nerlens Noel spent his abbreviated freshman season as a star center for the Kentucky Wildcats. Despite tearing his ACL in February, the 6’11″ forward is expected to become the first overall pick at the 2013 NBA draft. In addition to rehabilitating his knee, Noel has been able to spend some time at the University of Kentucky Children’s Hospital where he met Kelly Melton, a 7-year-old boy who suffers from leukemia.

Noel invited Melton to accompany him to the running of the Kentucky Derby this past Saturday, and it was probably the sweetest thing associated with the horse race. When asked about his company for the day, Noel didn’t make a big deal out of his charitable decision to bring Melton with him.

I invited him here to come experience this with me. It’s my first, it’s his first. It’s a great opportunity for us to come out here and just enjoy it.

Oh, and this photo:

PIC: Nerlens Noel helped 7-year-old Kelly Melton over some puddled water as they arrived at the Kentucky Derby. twitter.com/ExCats/status/…

— ExCats (@ExCats) May 4, 2013

3. A Childlike Capacity For Joy

In Aldous Huxley’s Point Counter Point, the author describes one of his characters as having a childlike capacity for joy. This, in my mind, is the personification of that wonderfully descriptive phrase.

No adult would ever be capable of so blindly celebrating a moment.

Things not on the minds of these kids at this moment in time:

• Mortgages;
• Taxes;
• Retirement funds;
• Relationship problems;
• Health concerns; and
• Family issues.

Thing on the minds of these kids at this moment in time:

• MY FAVORITE TEAM JUST SCORED AN IMPORTANT GOAL AND IT’S THE BEST THING EVER.

4. Priorities

We all know that eating pizza – even chicken (?) pizza – should always come a close second to watching playoff sports.

Your first impulse will likely be to credit the person ordering the pizza – despite their questionable choice in toppings – primarily for prioritizing their life in a proper manner, and secondly for having the courtesy to notify their local pizza establishment of the shift in necessary action. However, a healthy dose of credit is also due the telephone operator at the call center who spared no detail in recording the alteration from pickup to delivery.

5. Close Finishes In Auto Racing

There was Will Power coming from the 22nd starting position to move through the field in the first twenty laps, before an engine fire ended his day. There was Brazilian driver Tony Kaanan taking the lead on lap ten, and looking like a certain podium finisher before running out of fuel on lap 50. And then, there was the last six minutes of the race which saw Takuma Sato try to hold off Josef Newgarden (who started last), and then James Hinchcliffe, as the three racers battled through the final five laps.

Making the race all the more exciting was broadcaster Leigh Diffey whose inspired play-by-play included referring to Hinchcliffe as the Mayor of Hinchtown. The Mayor of Hinchtown! Of course, it all came down to the final turn on the final lap in what was perhaps the most exciting Indy race of the last few decades.

6. Kentucky Derby Hats

I love it when people get into the spirit of things, especially when there seems to be a collective acknowledgment that whatever being done is kind of silly, but it’s done nonetheless as a means of deliberately enhancing your experience. There’s likely nothing that better describes what I’m writing about than wearing Kentucky Derby hats. What started – and continues – as a tradition among the wealthy spectators in ”Millionaire’s Row” has been beautifully perverted by the commoners taking advantage of general admission to the race and going to outlandish and inevitable extremes with their head wear.

Here, we have The Great Encompassing:

Then, there’s the hat on the guy who feels as though it’s alright to wear a t-shirt in public with a semi-dressed woman – who also possesses wings – on it:

We also get the guy who ingested as many rose petals as he put on his hat:

And, the Kentucky Derby hat watch wouldn’t be complete without the person who is unsure as to whether three-year-old thoroughbreds are competing or unicorns:

Sadly, no one dresses like this at the off track betting establishments.

7. Farts

8. Baby Steps

Over the weekend, the Saudi Press Agency reported that private girls’ schools in Saudi Arabia will be allowed to practice sports as long as it remains in accordance with the rules of sharia law. This includes adherence to “decent” dress codes and female teachers supervising activities.

While our immediate response might be to think of this as solely a rights issue, it’s also a bit more practical than that. The freedom to exercise through sport is a matter of health for women in Saudi Arabia. Despite two female athletes representing Saudi Arabia at the 2012 Olympics, sports for women have largely been exclusive to the elite and wealthy after large amounts of female-only gyms were shut down in 2010 for being unlicensed.

The removal of some restrictions for private schools is certainly good news, but it remains unclear if plans to expand sport education in public schools will actually lead to girls being granted a physical education that at least compares to the one that boys receive.

9. Steph Curry’s Capabilities 

In Game One of the second round series, Curry again went off during the third quarter, shooting nine-for-12, including four-for-five on three-pointers to put up 22 points, and give the Warriors a 12 point lead going into the fourth quarter. The Spurs would eventually tie the game and win in overtime, but the lasting memory from the first encounter of the series is that of Curry’s brilliance.

There’s a frantic excitement to Curry’s play that reminds spectators of the best moments of College Basketball. It was one thing when Curry brought that kind of energy to Davidson, but to do the same thing at the NBA level, during the the most intense games with so much on the line is staggering to those of us watching on television.

10. The Greatest Video Bomb Of All-Time Ever

It angered me. And so, I wrote a piece in response to the original article in the heat of my righteous indignation.

It was stupid, not because I was wrong in my criticism, but because I was outraged over a column about baseball. Morosi’s writing was an estimated thirty-five times removed from anything resembling importance or relevance, and yet it succeeded in making me feel petulance to the point of expression. This is only made more regrettable by considering that such a reaction was quite possibly the very goal of the author.

I thought of this last night when social media went berserk over the idea of the Miami Herald’s Dan Le Batard voting for someone other than LeBron James for the NBA’s Most Valuable Player.

It all started with this:

@swaggsince82 @stugotz790 it was me!

— Dan Le Batard Show (@LeBatardShow) May 5, 2013

And was fueled by this:

Melo was robbed

— Dan Le Batard Show (@LeBatardShow) May 5, 2013

Le Batard jokingly suggested that he was the one voter out of 121 basketball writers and broadcasters to give a first place vote to Carmelo Anthony instead of James. His responding tweet was an obvious bit of sarcasm given that a) he is based out of Miami, b) he has a well-earned reputation for praising James and the Heat; c) this article was published mere hours before everything erupted, and d) he doesn’t even have a vote in the NBA MVP award process.

Nonetheless, Le Batard spent the three hours following his reply re-tweeting a barrage of personal insults directed at him for his supposedly wrong-headed voting. The rounds of social media unpleasantry included derision for his physical appearance, questioning of his mental fortitude and perhaps worst of all, comparisons to Skip Bayless.

The conspiracy theorists among us, unable to reconcile Le Batard’s reputation with his reported actions began hypothesizing that the newspaper columnist and radio host was attempting to make some sort of statement with his vote, that it was simultaneously the greatest troll job of all-time and a statement on the stupidity of sports award balloting. Deadspin was the first to officially post criticism for Le Batard’s obvious grab at attention.

Through it all, Le Batard did nothing to clear up the assumptions to which everyone was jumping. He merely proceeded to re-tweet the typhoon of outrage spilling over his feed.

Sports fans tend to get angry at opinions and those who hold notions contrary to their own. Let me correct that. People tend to get angry at opinions and those who hold notions contrary to their own. However, disputes over religion which represent an ideology for one’s entire existence, or even disagreements over property lines which govern one’s degree of ownership are seemingly far more important than disputes over who the most valuable basketball player was during the regular season. And yet, we, as sports fans, argue all of these things with similar ferocity.

Sports, if we’re honest with ourselves, are largely unimportant. There are certainly positive elements that can be derived from being a sports fan. We’ve discussed this before in other columns. However, sports are largely not impactful on our lives outside of the vicarious outlet that it provides us. And even then, it’s not as if this provision isn’t replaceable, as when our favorite sport has a work stoppage because of a labor dispute. We pick up other interests, and typically move on until it’s settled. From here, how much less important is the winner of an award within the confines of a sport? Then, how much less important are the trivialities of making a subjective vote based on one’s opinion of whom the best was at a game?

And yet, we react. We react with vitriol more common to something that matters. We do this in a fashion that makes it abundantly clear how effective sports are at blurring the lines to which a vicarious outlet for our emotions should extend.

In reality, the writer who actually gave a first-place vote in MVP balloting to Carmelo Anthony was Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe. He articulated an excellent justification for his vote, essentially stating that in his mind, James may have been the better and more productive player, but Anthony was the more valuable by the writer’s definition of the term. It’s fair. It’s not accurate in my mind, just as Miguel Cabrera being awarded the Most Valuable Player in the American League this past winter wasn’t accurate, but I understand that different perspectives exist, and it’s important the multiple ways of looking at things be considered, so that we, in coming to decisions, might contemplate everything that’s relevant.

It’s humorous to me that Le Batard would act as something of a distractive fullback creating space for Washburn’s eventual justifying run because the qualities championed by the Globe writer and his dissenting vote are similar to the ones I recognize and appreciate in the original and mistaken target of so much scorn. I like Le Batard because he seems to get it. Through his written and spoken commentary, I infer that he understands not just the relative unimportance of sports, but also the merits that the most absurd seeming arguments possess.

If it’s silly to get angry about sports, it’s exceedingly more absurd to get upset by the opinions of others on sports. Sometimes, it takes someone being silly and absurd to prompt a realization of our own silliness and absurdity. The type of reflection that Le Batard’s joking around combined with Washburn’s differing perspective actually holds a mirror to our own foolish behavior, and gives us the opportunity to improve. That’s not such a bad thing for sports, and especially sports writers, to do.

The move elicited a sorrowful response from Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Twitter, simultaneously confirming the duo’s verging on iconic popularity in their home country and that Canada is very much the New Zealand of the Western Hemisphere. Even to the most critical, the light-hearted approach to sports highlights from Onrait and O’Toole was a breath of fresh air in a typically stodgy environment.

FOX Sports 1 is expected to become one of the largest channel launches in television history when it begins broadcasting in August. This is thanks to the network replacing the already established SPEED network, which means it will immediately supplant NBC Sports Network as America’s second largest national sports network with estimated availability in 90 million homes. 

But just in case there’s any worry of the two sportscasters becoming too big for their britches, Onrait promises that although “we may be heading south, we remain forever CANADIAN!”

It shows Lars Eller, a Canadiens forward, bloodied on the ice after Eric Gryba, a Senators defenseman, ran him over in Montreal’s defensive zone during the second period. It was a play for which Gryba would receive a five minute major penalty and a game misconduct.

As athletes get bigger and faster, leagues will have to adapt their long-held practices and standards for protective rules. Several pundits suggested that despite the penalty and game misconduct, Gryba’s hit, which delivered so much punishment to Eller, wasn’t actually an infraction of the NHL rule book.

Just like the NFL, the NHL has been plagued by concussion issues which represent a serious danger to the quality of life – not just talent – of the athletes it depends on to deliver its product. Taking the issue lightly or mocking it with a pun on the cover of a major newspaper isn’t helpful in the least.

I vividly remember an uncomfortable moment from my childhood in which I knocked on the door of my friend Mark, who lived in my neighborhood. His mother answered, and when I asked her if Mark could come and play, she said something incoherent to me about baseball. I informed her that yes, it was entirely possible that we might play baseball, and then we stood silently in the foyer of her home for what seemed like ten minutes.

Finally, she told me to come back another time, and so I left, certain that Mark’s mother was a little bit deranged. Walking home, friendless, I pieced together the words I knew she said to me from our awkward exchange with the words she might have spoken. The results of my word investigation revealed that I had failed to understand Mark couldn’t waste time with me because he was practicing baseball.

I thought about how absurd it was to practice something like baseball. It seemed like homework, something I avoided by playing baseball. In my mind, putting effort into getting better at a game defeated the whole purpose of playing the game. Later, when Mark emerged as the best player on our baseball team, I justified his superiority on the field by the fact that he practiced. I reconciled the gulf in ability between us by saying to myself that I could be just as good if I was willing to lower myself to actually trying to do so.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my internal rationalization was similar to the underlying principles of the grotesque modern Olympic ideal. Masked in the false virtues of amateurism, superior athletes who competed professionally were outcast in favor of those who leaned on their own means to fund a more leisurely training, or had the political gravitas of an aristocratic surname that was able to induce government investment in their recreation.

By the end of the 19th Century, the abilities of the working class threatened the establishment. For decades, those in power had promoted athletic endeavors as a means of keeping their contemporary plebeians healthy and occupied, all while enjoying exclusive competitions among themselves which they believed, in their arrogance, to be at the highest level of sporting skill.

When working class athletes – through training and practice – began proving themselves to be equal or superior to the privileged, French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin created the modern Olympic games – along with its regulations differentiating between amateurs and professionals – so as to keep out the hard-working riff-raff and celebrate the accomplishments of the socially and financially well-to-do.

If the upper class was going to lose its stranglehold on athletic supremacy, it could at least grasp onto an imagined moral superiority as consolation. Under the guise of promoting well-roundedness as a virtue through the original Greek ideal, the leaders of the modern Olympic revival ultimately reinforced the merits of their own status. After all, the aristocratic athlete was the only athlete who could logistically afford to be versatile in multiple disciplines.

The aggressive promotion of an almost divine class distinction might not seem as prevalent today outside of a particularly vile character on an episode of Downton Abbey, but we still possess a general acceptance of conflicting principles when it comes to elite athletes.

We eagerly celebrate their achievements, but remain blissfully or perhaps willfully unaware of the development that leads to those accomplishments. When we do learn of the hard work and determination it takes at an early age to reach an elite level in athletics, we typically criticize the parenting that would focus a child’s growth in a solitary direction or we express false sympathy for the poor athlete’s lost childhood.

We’d rather cheer for the female weightlifter breaking records at the Olympics than hear stories like this …

Bringing up this discrepancy isn’t meant to absolve parents who push their children into sports as a means of fulfilling their own athletic aspirations. Parents are certainly capable of providing a negative influence in athletic development. It’s just something that we’d prefer not to think about when we’re cheering for goals, home runs and touchdowns.

However, natural abilities only take you so far. The athletes we celebrate at the professional level are more likely than not to have trained through childhood with a single-mindedness for the role that they now assume.

According to Paul Melia, the President and CEO of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, it doesn’t have to be that way. There are specific approaches that parents can make to ensure the healthy long-term development of their children in sports, without sacrificing the achievement of optimum ability. He cites the principles of the True Sport program, which acts as something of a best practices database for communities across the country for dealing with athletics.

The common sense principles are as follows: Go for it, play fair, respect others, keep it fun, stay healthy, include everyone and give back. It would obviously verge on the hilarious to hear an argument against any of these ideals, but Melia’s organization provides more direction than merely quoting platitudes. The biggest distinction he makes between healthy and unhealthy development is the age at which athletes are introduced to competitive strategies as an addition to skill-based training. He believes it happens far too early for athletic youths.

The model that we endorse [for youth development] emphasizes skill, not competition. When you emphasize skill to a young athlete as a coach or parent, it leads to development. Pushing them toward competition and teaching them strategy doesn’t do that.

Melia suggests that waiting to introduce competitive strategies until a youth has reached their mid-teens is the best model for long-term athletic development, even for the most elite. While the motivation behind the CCES’s recommendations are unimpeachable, Melia is the first to admit that the evidence to support this model is more anecdotal than empirical – at least for now.

It’s an ideal, and if it seems unrealistic or overly ambitious, that’s okay. It’s an extreme that combats another extreme wherein parents make decisions for their children often based on an overestimation of ability. Melia draws a line at the point where parents stop being parental, and no longer “cushion the pain or temper the joy” of their children while they’re participating in sports.

It’s a line that seems to make sense. Whether it resonates with our moral fiber or it’s merely a condition of the false virtues promoted by an aristocracy whose stranglehold on thinking has since slipped, we still hold well-roundedness in individuals up as an archetypal goal for all of humanity, including athletes. The familial figure who strays from his or her role as parent into one as a coach will lead to contradictions with what’s still referred to as the Olympic ideal.

Again, we come back to that word: ideal. It’s important because what’s ideal isn’t always what’s practical. It’s a human concept of what’s perfect, but because humans aren’t perfect, neither are our concepts of perfection. The limitations of time and money and human capacity make it not just improbable, but impossible to succeed as an elite athlete without a single-minded focus from an early age. A driving force behind this focus is necessary because a child alone, is unable to facilitate a devotion to sports.

And so, athletic achievement is almost always the result of a parent’s involvement. As I’ve already mentioned, as sports fans, we celebrate the results of that involvement, while possessing little but ignorance or disdain for its process. It’s very much like a hot dog that we consume without considering or wanting to consider how it’s made. That is unless we’re vegetarians, and then we complain about it constantly.

So, let’s visit the figurative hot dog factory.

Tony Rasmus is the father of four sons, two of whom were drafted by Major League Baseball teams. His oldest son, Colby, plays center field for the Toronto Blue Jays, and his second oldest son, Cory, is a relief pitcher for the Gwinnett Braves, the Triple-A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves.

He oversaw a development plan for his two sons that began before either was a teenager. It was not a joke, and nothing about it included the gentle reinforcement of platitudes.

We worked out six days a week lifting weights, long tossing, doing everything imaginable baseball related to get better. They drank weight drinks three and four times a day, seven days a week. They played travel baseball. I mean well over 100 baseball games a year, flying as a 12-year-old all over the country to play travel ball games.

As they got older I can’t remember allowing them to spend the night away from home for even one night while they were in high school. They had different things to do six days a week in order to either develop their arm strength, speed, or muscular development. From 11 years of age on they worked on some type of skill as an athlete.

This was their trade off. They never cleaned the house or did chores as long as they were working out. I constantly pushed them.

His investment in his children wasn’t just a matter of time. After selling some land in the early nineties, Rasmus took a portion of the money and purchased a pitching machine for the batting cage that he built in his family’s back yard. This was met with some concern by the board of the local coach-pitch league, who questioned the father’s motivation in the amount of time he spent practicing with his children. It was enough to cause some reflection in the former baseball player who never reached the big league level.

I decided one day to ask [Colby and Cory] what they wanted out of this life. I asked them if they wanted me to be that parent who patted [them] on the back after a four strike out night and told [them] how great [they were] or if they wanted me to stick my foot up their butt and push them to be their best.

They actually walked a short distance away and talked between themselves for what seemed like five minutes. They came back over too me and Colby said, “We want you to put your foot up our butts cause we want to be play in the major leagues.” I told them “Okay, what you’re telling me is that the days you don’t feel like working you’re giving me the authority to push you to keep working.” They nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”

Criticism for supposedly living through his kids would continue to follow Rasmus, even after Colby reached the Major Leagues with the St. Louis Cardinals. Ahead of the 2011 season, Rasmus was openly critical of the Cardinals’ plan for his son’s off season training. The local media jumped all over his level of involvement in his son’s life, and Rasmus’s reputation for being an overbearing parent became known throughout baseball.

While it might be easy for an outsider to label such a relationship as harmful, and denigrate a parent’s involvement in the life of a young athlete, our perspective is challenged when we learn how Rasmus justifies his deep commitment to his sons.

I wasn’t ready to turn over any aspect of my kids lives to strangers. When my kids were taking calculus, I felt like I needed to help instruct them at night to make sure they understood. I wasn’t depending on a teacher to do that work for me. When it came to athletics I wasn’t willing to entrust my kids athletic futures to some guy who was responsible for the team’s success. He wasn’t going to be focused on my son getting better like I would be. I chose to spend my time helping my kids become better baseball players. I didn’t choose to drop them off at a practice and let some other guy baby sit them for me while me and the wife went to get our pedicures. I always felt like I had their best interests at heart.

Suddenly, the dichotomy that we imagined seems a little more nuanced. This isn’t the ramblings of a coach-dad living through his player-sons, it’s the explanation of a loving father whose devotion has led to success for his children that should afford them a high quality of life.

I’m reminded of the memory I shared at the beginning of this piece about dismissing my peer’s skills as merely the result of practicing, and I wonder if even as adults we don’t purposely find ways to discredit parenting that’s more active than typical as a means of justifying our own inactivity. It goes back to the bastardized version of the Olympic ideal that seeks to disparage work as a means of achievement. It’s as though we subconsciously want to imagine athletic success to be natural like the aristocrats at the end of the 19th Century, a divine athletic right.

It’s not. It takes work that verges on obsession.

My purpose in bringing up a portrait of the athlete as a young person isn’t to confirm Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hour theory, which almost blindly suggests success in any field is merely a matter of practicing a specific task for 10,000 hours. Nor is it to absolve parents who push their children to the detriment of their progress as human beings. This certainly happens, and it’s awful.

However, it doesn’t mean that every situation is the same. There’s no master template to create a well-adjusted, elite athlete. There never will be. And that’s why we rely on anecdotal evidence to support the ideas and best practices that are in place for raising a child to be exceptional at sports.

We place a lot of emphasis on what a child involved in an athletic development program might miss, but the alternative to a successful life in sport isn’t always a successful life in academics or health care or law or something else that society deems to be of more value. All of these things depend on direction at a young age, and I have a hard time reasonably assigning blame on a parent who pushes their child toward success in a field for which their best equipped to assist in development.

I asked Tony Rasmus specifically about balancing the athletic pursuits of his sons with their development as well-adjusted human beings.

You only have life experiences to lean on so you have to make a judgement call that moment in time.  You don’t have a mulligan. There are no do overs with your kids. If we erred, we erred on the side of working harder to help them become the best athletes they could be.

Athletes, it seems, are also human beings. They’re humans who have worked incredibly hard from an early age to achieve success. As sports fans, our admiration for them might seem as natural we want their skills to be. However, at the foundation of our recognition, we’re pulled between a Puritan appreciation for hard work and past aristocratic ideals of what the proper athlete should be. This is what leaves us cheering their accomplishments on the field, court or rink, while turning a blind eye to the development that brought them to be celebrated.

Acknowledging hard work spoils the illusion that we enjoy, but it also leads to less assumptions about how we define good and bad development. It’s a caution that perhaps, we might want to spend more time practicing.

Sports are really, really great. However, the more time you spend reading and writing about a topic, the greater the chance that its ugliness will be realized. This is why our focus often becomes embittered by all of the negative aspects present in sports. We forget why sports are so great to begin with. And so, that’s where The Week In Sports Happiness comes into play.

Every week, I’ll present the ten things that are making me happy from the world of sports. It might be a particular article, it could be a winning streak, it may even be an animated GIF. No matter what, it’s from sports, it made me feel good inside, and I hope it does the same for you.

Without further ado, sports the good:

1. Being Who You Are

On Monday, Jason Collins became the first and only openly gay professional male athlete actively participating in a major North American team sport when he wrote the following in a special column for Sports Illustrated.

I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.

As I wrote on Monday, Collins coming out is worth celebrating because it makes it easier for the next athlete to come out, and the next athlete after that, until we no longer care about the sexuality of professional athletes, which is really the ultimate goal. It’s a step forward. It’s progress. And it reaffirms the notion that sports are not about who you are as much as what you can do.

2. Emotional Celebrations

Don’t hold back, now. Let it all out.

3. This Skip Bayless Screen Shot

Leading the way in the strange championing of quarterback Tim Tebow over the last few years has been ESPN’s Skip Bayless, who looked like this right when the most ideal chyron possible came on the screen.

The Tebow story has been a nice little narrative for Bayless to latch onto, and now as it appears to be drawing to a close, the talking head has decided to not quietly into the good night.

Never in NFL history has a QB accomplished so much so early in his career, been so mistreated by a new team, then been so rejected: TEBOW.

— Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) April 30, 2013

I wouldn’t celebrate anyone losing their job, and I hope that whatever Tebow does next – whether in football or elsewhere – he’ll find success. However, I will very much celebrate the death of an overwrought narrative, constantly propagated by television personalities who have nothing more interesting to tell us.

Right now Tim Tebow could win more games than 10 or 12 of the NFL’s starting QBs and I’m being conservative with that number.

— Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) April 30, 2013

Reminder: After 361 attempts, Tim Tebow’s career pass completion rate is 47.9%.

4. This Hockey Jersey

Playoff hockey makes the intensity of regular season hockey maudlin by comparison. No other sport offers such a remarkable difference between its postseason and its regular schedule, when everything good that the game is capable of offering is amplified. Hockey transforms at this time of year from something to which I’ll casually pay attention into an immensely entertaining product with an increased pace, controlled violence and meaning in every shift.

This, on its own, is enough to make me happy.  However, what’s really pleasing at this time of year is the fanaticism associated with the sport in Canada coupled with the complete and utter lack of fashion sense that the typical fan seems to possess. The results can be seen above in a photo I snapped while walking around downtown Toronto on Tuesday afternoon.

5. Spencer Hall

Tackling serious issues in sports is a tricky bit of business. For the most part, sports are rather meaningless. It can certainly rise above its regular station from time to time, and become something more than just a distraction, but those instances are few and far between. Too often, sports writers attempt to create meaning where none exists, seemingly as a means of justifying the effort they put into writing about a particular topic.

It’s credit to SB Nation’s Spencer Hall that he doesn’t do this. His writing is informed by context, without being short of opinion or content. Hall’s latest piece on Jason Collins and the reactions that his coming out garnered is wonderful. It’s even-handed, but opinionated. Clever, but not smarmy. Most of all, it’s honest. Truthful about perspective, and just an entertaining read on a topic that rarely gets such a treatment.

6. Athletes Who Get It

It’s likely easy for most athletes to forget that what they do on a day-to-day basis is exceptional to a great many of us. Attending a sporting event remains a treat for most fans, and its refreshing to find an athlete who seems to understand this.

When Minnesota Twins closer Glen Perkins received a special request over Twitter ahead of Sunday’s game, the pitcher actually went to the trouble of finding a fan tickets to the game. It’s a nice deed that becomes especially endearing when we consider that it wasn’t done with anything resembling an ulterior motive. A fan asked for help. A baseball player provided it. And it worked out wonderfully.

how many? RT @alexberg22: Got screwed over on tickets I bought last night for today’s game. Any chance my fav.player @glen_perkins can help?

— Glen Perkins (@glen_perkins) April 28, 2013

gate 29 window 3 under Alex berg. @alexberg22: @glen_perkins 4 tickets. My girlfriend, my grandma, and my cousin.

— Glen Perkins (@glen_perkins) April 28, 2013

@glen_perkins Thanks again for the tickets! We love our seats! #GoTwins twitter.com/AlexBerg22/sta…

— Alex Berg (@AlexBerg22) April 28, 2013

7. An Impossible Miss

He would manage to dribble past every defender on the opposing team only to shoot the ball wide, or high, or even occasionally off of a post and cross bar. It went from odd to comical to frustrating to just being odd again. By the second or third time our team played together, we began referring to the phenomenon as Dan’s disease. Shortly after that, it caught on with other teams, and any missed shot became known as Dan’s disease. Then, missed basketball shots and dropped baseballs both began being the result of Dan’s disease. And finally, any blunder in anything was considered to be the result of Dan’s disease.

After watching the video above, I feel as though it’s safe to assume Beerschot striker Nicoletta den Ridder from the women’s Eredivisie has a rather severe case of Dan’s disease. So severe in fact that perhaps it should henceforth be renamed Nicoletta’s disease.

Why didn’t she just put the ball in the net?

8. Hockey’s Brodown

On Thursday, the Carolina Hurricanes started their game against the New York Rangers with a forward line consisting of Jordan Staal, Eric Staal and Jared Staal. All three are brothers. And all three played on the same team after Jared was called up from the AHL. This, in itself, is amazing for obvious reasons, but there’s more …

The Hurricanes were playing the Rangers, who happen to employ a defenseman by the name of Marc Staal who is, you’ll never guess, a brother to the other three who play for the Hurricanes. Unfortunately, Marc was injured on Thursday and didn’t play in a game in which there could have been four brothers all on the ice at once.

But we’re not done yet. Somehow, three brothers playing on the same team isn’t even all that rare. It’s happened three times before in the NHL, most recently in 1985 when Peter Stastny, Anton Stastny and Marian Stastny suited up for the Quebec Nordiques. According to NHL.com, Thursday’s game was the tenth time in North American professional sports that three brothers played on the same team.

9. The List Of Defendants In Brian Burke’s Lawsuit

Shortly after Brian Burke was fired as general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, rumors began circulating that his personal life might have had something to do with his dismissal. More specifically, internet message boards suggested an extra marital affair that led to the impregnation of Rogers Sportsnet reporter Hazel Mae was the cause of his firing. It’s the type of thing that most people roll their eyes at and move on, but apparently not Brian Burke.

He’s taking the fight to those who published such rumors online, suing several defendants. It all sounds like serious business, and as you read through the letter released by Burke’s lawyer this is certainly the sense that you get. But then you get to the point where the names of the defendants are listed:

“NoFixedAddress”, “CamBarkerFan”, “Lavy16”, “mbskidmore”, “Tulowd”, “Loob”, “Naggah”, “mowerman”, “Aaronp18”, “Steve”, “KaBoomin8”, “THEzbrad”, “Slobberface”, “Poonerman”, “isolatedcircuit”, “Kanada Kev”, and “sir psycho sexy”.

Oh boy.

10. Professional Wrestling Nostalgia

I’ve never been more reminded of a moment from my childhood than when I saw this GIF of a girl who was upset that her favorite wrestler lost a match.

It was 1987. The World Wrestling Federation came to Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, and featured a bout between my favorite wrestler, Junkyard Dog, and the Intercontinental Champion, The Honkey Tonk Man. JYD was winning the match until Jimmy Hart distracted the referee and The Honkey Tonk Man smashed his manager’s megaphone over the challenger’s head. He was knocked out. And The Honkey Tonk man covered him for an easy pin. I was devastated to the point of tears.

My mother, who so graciously accompanied me to the local auditorium to see the wrestlers, comforted me in the most amazing way. Placing her arm around me, she told me that not only did I know in my heart that Junkyard Dog should have won the match, but Junkyark Dog knew in his heart that he should have won the match, as well. And that’s what’s most important.

I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but this was probably her greatest moment of parenting.

Security theater was made for sporting events. The act of waiting outside of stadiums for pat downs and a jaunt through the metal detector was a ritual most of us – save for the nervous 17-year-old with a mickey in his sock – paid no mind. We were safe because a group of part-time employees took a course over the weekend. Their presence did not ensure protection. It wasn’t about that. Seeing a police car on the street late at night – those officers could be dirty cops. Observing an accused murderer finally being caught – he could be innocent. We rely on aesthetics for reassurance. The bombings in Boston changed that, just like the bombing during the 1996 Summer Olympics.

Before Atlanta and Boston was Hamburg. An event marred not by a terrorist attack, but an unhinged, knife wielding man who would alter the future of women’s tennis.

Monica Seles made it clear early on: she was going to be one of the greats.  After playing in her first professional tournament as a 14-year-old, the daughter of Eszter and Károly joined the tour, full-time, one year later. She would take Steffi Graf to a third set in a 1989 French Open semifinal.

In 1990 Monica battled Graf at Roland Garros once again, this time in the final. Graf was on an incredible run, reaching 13 consecutive Grand Slam finals. Seles triumphed in straight sets, becoming the youngest French Open Champion in history. At 16 years and six months Seles had officially arrived. What came next can only be described as pure dominance.

Over the course of 25 months (January ’91 to February ’93) Seles won 22 titles, reached the final of 33 of the 34 tournaments she entered and had a ridiculous 98% winning percentage in Grand Slam tournaments. Heading into the 1993 season she had surpassed Graf as the person to beat on the women’s tour. Seles would cement her place at the top of the game with a win over her German rival in the Australian Open final. Graf fans had reason to be concerned. After that match in Melbourne, Seles had defeated Graf in three of the four Grand Slam finals they contested.

Manic devotion to individual athletes isn’t just a tennis thing. Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna were teammates and rivals. By the end of 1989 there was no in between. You had to choose one or the other. When Senna tragically passed on May 1st, 1994, Prost remarked a part of himself also died that day.

While the Prost-Senna rivalry saw two drivers inflict direct harm on each other, including Senna’s decision to clip Prost at 160 miles per hour on the first turn of the Suzuka Circuit in 1990, it was an outsider that would dictate the future of tennis’s brightest stars.

The Seles-Graf rivalry was forever altered by a 39-year-old unemployed lathe operator, a fact that remains incredibly strange today. During a changeover, Günter Parche leaned over a three foot high barrier and stabbed Seles from behind. Parche, obsessed with seeing Graf regain the number one ranking, took it upon himself to make his vision become reality. At the ensuing trial, Parche’s lawyer argued his client lived in a fantasy world. Experts told the court Parche had a personality disorder. The judge ruled the attack as attempted assault and Parche received a two-year suspended sentence. Seles, unable to comprehend the lenient sentence, has never gone back to Germany.

Few remember that Graf went on to win the tournament, a cruel twist of fate that seemingly validated Parche’s delusion. Security at future events was beefed up. The damage done to Seles mentally, however, was irreparable.

The attack led to depression and binge eating. Seles returned to the tour in 1995. She went on to win one more slam – the 1996 Australian Open – before finally retiring in 2008. Parche suffered a series of strokes that put him in a nursing home to ride out his remaining days.

I was stabbed on court, in front of thousands of people,” she wrote in her autobiography. It is not possible to talk about distancing yourself from that. It changed my career and irrevocably damaged my soul. A split second made me a different person.

We’ll never know what could have been. Monica Seles could have the been greatest female tennis player of all time.  She could have broken Steffi Graf’s record for grand slams. Among Williams, Evert, Graf and Navratilova, Seles could have stood above.

Thanks to the actions of a man that needed help in the most literal sense,  we are left with what could have been. Twenty years ago today, the sport Monica Seles devoted her life to failed to protect her.

I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.

I don’t feel this urge to cheer for him because he’s a homosexual. After all, I wouldn’t cheer for another athlete because he’s a heterosexual.

Just imagine: High-five! You prefer a particular gender for sexual relations and potential domestic partnership. Yes! Fist bumps all around.

It’s so absurd, and yet, not that far off from what’s actually expressed by those who would attempt to discriminate against a certain type of people based on such things.

I cheer for Jason Collins because I cheer for courage. I cheer for Jason Collins because I cheer for social progress. I cheer for Jason Collins because somewhere there’s a young athlete confused about whom he or she is, and a black 34-year-old NBA center just made it easier for them to understand that they’re not weird, that their preferences aren’t wrong, that what they feel inside might just make them a little bit like Jason Collins. And that’s something for which cheering is worthwhile.

As of the publication of his personal essay, Collins is the first and only openly gay professional male athlete actively participating in a major North American team sport. His announcement has been met – as would be expected – with both positive and negative reactions. The negative can be found in the heaping cesspit of ignorance and hate in the comments section of his column. The positive is seen in the support and praise professional athletes across all sports have given to Collins.

I hope that future generations of sports fans will learn about what Collins wrote today, and recognize it in a manner that’s almost patronizing of the past. “That was great, for them,” they’ll say as they imagine us churning butter, watching cable television and waiting for newspapers to be delivered to our doors. Those who choose to respond negatively to Collins coming out will be seen as cruel and stupid, and probably depicted in future movies as idiot bad guys with really bad teeth and asymmetrical faces. And those who support Collins will be thought of with an attitude that suggests theirs was the obvious response.

Because then it would prove today’s announcement to merely be a first step, a dramatic move in the right direction that encourages others.

Collins is an established basketball player entering free agency. Soon, there will be baseball players in their prime. Then, a NASCAR driver. After that, a hockey player in his rookie season. And eventually, there will be young athletes in college football.

And so on, and so on, until no one will care at all about sexual orientation, which, in my mind, is the ultimate goal.

If all that Collins did today was send a message, the message is a good one, and it’s clear: Sports should be indiscriminate. Skin color, biological makeup, personal preferences and interests don’t matter. All that does is whether or not you can play. And that’s something that absolutely everyone has the right to find out.

Eventually, it won’t be notable to be a gay athlete. It will seem strange that someone had to stand up and tell everyone that they were gay to make it not weird anymore. Jason Collins did that today, and this is why we should cheer for him.

We’re a step closer to being a better species thanks to a 34-year-old NBA center, who is black, and who is gay.

Oh, no. I don’t think there was. I think he scored a nice goal, and that’s what the ref saw. Maybe we should get you as a ref maybe, eh? The first female referee. Can’t play probably either, right? But you’re thinking the game, like you know it? Yeah, see ya.

Demeaning and unprofessional? Certainly. Sexist? I’m not entirely sure.

Collecting player quotes is never easy, let alone in a hostile environment. Thomson knew what she was doing in asking Keith about the controversial play. She was trying to provoke a response just like any other reporter would attempt. The risk she ran was that Keith would act as he did toward her. Whether male or female, the faulty “never played the game, so you don’t understand” argument is always a possibility.

The only evidence of gender-based discrimination was Keith mentioning that Thomson would be the first female referee in his made-up scenario. The comment hints that Keith might have seen Thomson as a woman first, and a reporter second, possibly motivating his dismissive and patronizing attitude toward her. However, to convict him of sexism in our minds for this would take a lot of assumptive thinking.

Both parties in the dispute quickly moved on, blaming the immediacy of the interview to a tough loss for the contentious tone of Keith’s interaction.

Hockey is an emotional game and things are often said in the heat of the moment. I think this is what happened last night. I’ve moved on

— Karen Thomson (@KJT1040) April 23, 2013

Then, on Saturday night, during his Coach’s Corner segment on CBC’s Hockey Night In Canada, Don Cherry resurrected the incident for the purpose of promoting his own opinion that women shouldn’t be allowed in an NHL dressing room at all.

I really believe this, I don’t believe women should be in the male dressing room.

Why is that? According to the boisterous television personality, the reason, and I use the term loosely, is that allowing women in an area where naked men might congregate is discriminatory toward men.

I don’t feel that women are equal. They’re above us. And I think they’re on a pedestal. And they should not be walking in when naked guys are walking in.

Yes, because whenever I think of professional athletics and sports media, I shed a tear for all of the poor men who have struggled under the domain of female dominated industries.

While this may be what Cherry is laughably suggesting on television, it feels like there’s an ulterior motive for the commentator’s monologue involving the promotion of gender normative ideals. The former hockey coach, a poster child for leaning on nostalgia to promote a fictionalized version of an over-sanitized past, is hearkening back to the good ol’ days with his take, when gender was easily defined and classified by its roles. Men work. Women stay at home.

It’s the promotion of a discriminatory divide. The irony of the situation is that Cherry began his rant by suggesting that Keith’s comments were innocuous, and it was Vancouver reporters who erroneously took his words and shaped it into something that it wasn’t to fit their own agenda. He then proceeded to essentially use Keith’s comments as a launching pad to proselytize on his own blatantly sexist ideals, and voice a far more harmful worldview than any reporter claimed of Keith.

I realize that voicing criticism of Cherry is fishing in a stocked pond, and that the immediate reaction of most is to laugh his comments off and criticize others who don’t do the same for failing to realize his shtick. I get it. He’s a clown. A fool. I’ve even written about it before.

However, in this particular instance, I feel that not standing up to ignorance is more harmful than usual. I hesitate to use the “think of the children” ploy to cement an argument, but watching Cherry’s performance on Saturday night, I couldn’t help it.

I thought of children. I thought of little girls with their brothers, sisters, moms and dads, or whatever combination of family members best describes their specific situation. I imagined them watching this man on television. He’s an older man, of an age for which they have been taught to treat with respect. And I wondered at what sort of impact he might have on them as he purposefully sought to limit what they could do based solely on their gender, all under the guise of telling-it-like-it-is entertainment.

I’m not really a basketball fan. I admire it from afar. The coordination. The leaping. The running. The endurance. My ignorance to the finer points of analytics and tactics affords me a certain wonderment as a spectator that’s absent from other sports for which I have a greater understanding.

With the start of the NBA playoffs earlier this week, I decided to alter this comfortable hands-off relationship I had developed with the sport. I wanted to end the neutral observer nonsense, and pick a team to support, hopefully, throughout the next month, and if it worked out, perhaps longer.

Typically, this is a less conscious decision for sports fans. We often cheer for teams based on regional bias, or we support a club because our parents supported that club. Or, if we’re particularly rebellious, we swear allegiance to a franchise because its the main rival of the one with which our parents have allied themselves. I’m cheering for the Chicago Blackhawks because you just don’t understand, Vancouver mom.

My forced approach to the NBA playoffs pushed me to reflect on the differences between watching a sport as a neutral observer and obsessing over a sport as a fan with a rooting interest. It’s vastly different. For many of us who support a team, the individual outcomes of tiny instances within a game that all add up to produce a result are the sole responsibility of the players on the team over which we obsess.

As an ardent fan of the San Francisco Giants, competent pitchers don’t successfully strike out Buster Posey. He strikes out, himself. Excellent batters don’t hit home runs off of Madison Bumgarner. The young left-handed pitcher gives up home runs. At the same time, opposing pitchers don’t give up home runs to Buster Posey. He hits them. Just as batters facing Madison Bumgarner don’t strike out. He does that.

Despite it being a competition between two, for many of us, there is ever only one team on the field, court or rink.

This theory was fresh in my mind while watching the first leg of the UEFA Champions League semifinal between Bayern Munich and Barcelona on Monday. During the match, play-by-play maestro Martin Tyler consistently offered his commentary from the perspective of the Spanish side, at one point using the term “robbery” to describe the German club’s 2-0 lead.

For someone who doesn’t fetishize possession based tactics, it seemed strange. Munich was quite clearly the dominant side. Yes, they may have benefited from a misstep or two by officials, but the overwhelming amount of opportunities that Bayern produced against Barcelona put their opponents on the run and flustered throughout most of the match.

Tyler wasn’t just acting as a Barcelona apologist, he was failing to offer anything approaching a neutral perspective.  He was behaving as I might act while watching a Giants game. Munich’s defensive positioning didn’t neutralize Lionel Messi. The Argentinean failed to break through. Arjen Robben didn’t confound Jordi Alba with his attack down the right side of the pitch. The left back wasn’t having a good game.

It wasn’t just Tyler. This same sentiment was expressed in the myriad of match reports following Munich’s 4-0 victory. It was as though the outcome of the game had nothing to do with Bayern Munich and everything to do with Barcelona.

Sports are such a vicarious experience that the urge to align oneself with a side is overwhelming even for those whose livelihoods depend on neutrality, or at least the appearance of it. Picking a team to cheer for enhances a fan’s experience, but for a journalist, a failure to recognize multiple perspectives to the action diminishes the experience of others instead of enhancing it.

This strange mixture of bias, perspective, entertainment and experience was inadvertently addressed in a recent column by Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci, who suggests that the modern passive aggressive approach to hitting in baseball isn’t only failing, but also ruining the sport’s watchability.

It’s a ridiculous notion, dependent on firmly entrenching oneself in the perspective of the batter instead of the pitcher while imagining one’s personal preferences for entertainment to be universally valued. It’s the type of idea that’s completely acceptable for a fan and absolutely not for a journalist, on whom fans depend.

As fans, we root for teams to make sports fun, and we ask that broadcasters and writers don’t so as to maintain that level of entertainment. It’s an important distinction to make, not only for personal reasons, but also as something for the many fans who express their ideas through social media and blogging. As easy as it is to slip into imagining that all outcomes are the result of one team’s actions, it’s worth stepping out of the fan’s perspective from time to time to embrace a more balanced view of what our hearts tell us is true.

For now, I think I like the Golden State Warriors.

Sports are really, really great. However, the more time you spend reading and writing about a topic, the greater the chance that its ugliness will be realized. This is why our focus often becomes embittered by all of the negative aspects present in sports. We forget why sports are so great to begin with. And so, that’s where The Week In Sports Happiness comes into play.

Every week, I’ll present the ten things that are making me happy from the world of sports. It might be a particular article, it could be a winning streak, it may even be an animated GIF. No matter what, it’s from sports, it made me feel good inside, and I hope it does the same for you.

Without further ado, sports the good:

1. Hitting Home Runs By Request

Todd Frazier is perhaps best known as the guy who hit a no-handed home run last year.

Or the guy who saved another human being’s life while at dinner.

Or the guy who probably should have been given more plate appearances during the NLDS over Scott Rolen last year.

Frazier, who has gotten off to a phenomenal start this season after an excellent rookie campaign, is now gaining notoriety for delivering on a promise to Ted Kremer.

An enormous fan of the Cincinnati Reds, Kremer was born with Down syndrome. Last summer, Kremer spent a game as the team’s honorary bat boy after his parents won a silent auction at a fundraiser. The Reds loved his enthusiasm for baseball, and have invited him back for several special occasions.

Acting as a bat boy once again this past week, Kremer asked the team for three things: 1) 11 runs; 2) 11 strikeouts for free pizza; and 3) a Todd Frazier home run.

All three wishes were granted in Cincinnati’s 11-1 win over the Miami Marlins last Thursday night, but the most dramatic was Frazier’s home run.

Does no one clean things anymore? Seriously, it’s so dusty in here right now.

2. RVP

En route to capturing their 20th Premiership title, Manchester United benefited from a first half hat trick by Dutch striker Robin Van Persie in their clinching victory over Aston Villa on Monday.

This was his second goal:

As impressive as that volley was, it pales in comparison to the joy that this tweet brings:

Poor Ravi Visvesvara Prasad, destined to always live in the shadow of the other RVP.

3. Roy Hibbert’s Honesty

It’s easy to like Roy Hibbert of the Indiana Pacers. He’s a fantastic defender who logs a ton of minutes for a fun team to watch. He’s personable in interviews, and he even makes cameo appearances on critically adored sitcoms.

I’m not the fastest guy. I need to roll out of screens a lot quicker. To tell you the truth, when we get in a pick-and-roll, I just try to make sure I get George Hill or Paul George — get them open. I know more than likely they are going to hit the shot. I’m just not the fastest guy rolling off screens, like an Amar’e Stoudemire or anybody like that.

I love this kind of honest insight into any sport.

I also love this:

4. A Record In Any Language

What you’re seeing below is Jamaican cricketer Chris Gayle scoring the fastest century in the history of professional cricket.

The West Indian battered the Pune Warriors bowling attack with a century that included seven dot balls, four singles, eight fours and 11 sixes for the home side at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore. By the end of his innings he had amassed 17 sixes and 13 fours as Bangalore recorded a total of 263 for five, the highest innings total in a Twenty20 match.

But just by watching Gayle’s performance, it’s easy to recognize something happening that one seldom sees on a cricket field. To make cricket fans roll their eyes, it’s like watching Major League Baseball batting practice.

5. World War Zito

The Barry Zito Renaissance is a wonderful thing. Sure, it’s unlikely to last, but enjoying fleeting moments is what makes life worth living. No part of the left-handed soft tosser’s revival is more thrilling to see than his daring to go up in the zone with an 83 miles per hour fastball that represents the most oh-no-he-di’n't moment that baseball is able to offer.

Climbing the ladder like Zito does here is the type of strategy more often employed by pitchers able to reach, oh, let’s say, the high eighties with their fastball velocity.

6. The Half-Time Show In Oklahoma City

The best part about the Oklahoma City Thunder’s half-time show for their NBA post-season series opener against the Houston Rockets was that it was entertaining. The worst part was that it proved a troupe of trained dogs could be more entertaining than a game of playoff basketball.

7. Toothless Expressions Of Shock

Typically, using the term “toothless expressions of shock” would be meant to infer a false reaction to something ordinary that was treated as though it was the most appalling thing in the world by someone eager to prove to others that they’re easily offended and therefore morally superior.

This time though, I’m referring to Travis Hamonic of the New York Islanders:

Skates are just boots with knives, man. Boots with knives.

8. A Simple Response

Last week, Philadelphia Phillies closer Jonathan Papelbon, who emerged as a Major League Baseball star with the Boston Red Sox, was asked about the Boston Marathon bombings. After a measured response in which he expressed some honest fears about crowd interactions at a baseball game, Papelbon went on to share his concerns over gun control.

Obama wants to take our guns from us and everything.

In one person’s eagerness to chastise Papelbon for his ridiculous stance, Michael Piel failed to recognize exactly which pitcher on the Phillies staff made the comments about Obama taking guns away. Reliever Jon Pettibone took the case of mistaken identity in stride.

Stick to myopic takes on issues calling for nuance, geez.

9. Tommy Lasorda’s Exuberant Joy At Conducting A Ceremonial Face Off

10. The Pulled Pork Parfait At Miller Park In Milwaukee

The Pulled Pork Parfait at Miller Park in Milwaukee consists of layers of pulled pork separated by swirls of mashed potatoes. That’s probably all you need to know about it, but I’ll go to the trouble of informing you that the pulled pork parfait has its own Twitter account and Facebook page as well.

Early on Wendesday afternoon, multiple reports emerged from several media outlets claiming that investigators in the Boston Marathon bombings had identified a possible suspect. After this brief bout of congruity, it all went strange with conflicting reports coming from different news agencies and, in the case of CNN, from within the same news network. Depending on what article you were reading, whose Twitter feed you were following or what network you were watching, a suspect might have been arrested, identified, not identified, on the way to a court house, or in hiding.

CNN reporters Fran Townsend (through federal sources) and John King (through local sources) were the first to report that an arrest had been made in the case. Less than an hour later, former FBI Assistant Director Tom Fuentes told CNN that according to several of his sources, no arrest had been made. Later, Townsend came back to reverse what she had previous said on air, confirming that there was no arrest after speaking with additional sources who told her that authorities didn’t even have a name of the suspect.

King’s media culpa was similar to Townsend’s, but he refuted that investigators didn’t know the name of the wanted man, claiming that a suspect had definitely been identified. This prompted an unintentionally hilarious debate among the talking heads on the network over what “identified” actually meant, live on the streets of Boston. The inadvertent humor peaked when King attempted to summarize everything he was hearing by suggesting that for certain, something was afoot.

In addition to the heaping spoonfuls of scorn served through Twitter and Facebook, comedian Jon Stewart was especially merciless in his spirited take down of the day’s coverage, referring to CNN as the human centipede of news on The Daily Show. On Sunday, the New York Times published an excellent bit of criticism from David Carr that essentially called for a better distinction between newscasters and reporters.

There are several reasons to mock CNN. There’s the self-importance, the sensational catch phrase labeling and their emphasis on production over content. However, making mistakes in their reporting, even ones as high-profiled as Townsend’s and King’s, shouldn’t be the target for scorn that it’s been. Perhaps, if an erroneous story was reported on a one-hour evening newscast, or if it was twenty years ago, we’d have reason to be upset. But it didn’t happen then. It happened in an age when the accessibility of technology allows us to demand immediacy.

However, that immediacy comes with a price. There’s no longer an easy answer to what’s happening. Stories develop and we are now along for that ride, and sometimes it’s a bumpy one.

It seems exceedingly odd to me that we would hold a medium that has evolved so rapidly to the same standards that we did before the increased speed of that evolution. News isn’t presented to us in a sculpted fashion anymore on television, manicured and primed by anchors and reporters. On a 24 hour news network, the story comes to us as it happens. We read, see or hear the story as it unfolds. Sometimes, that comes with faulty information, which is what Townsend and King derived from their sources last week. Sometimes, it doesn’t. The thing is, we only learn what reporters are hearing, and it’s an ongoing process.

Frankly, I want to know what plugged-in reporters are hearing. If John King has sources telling him something, and from what CNN has said in the aftermath, they had three sources all saying the same thing, I want to be informed of it. Is it really assuming to much to expect audiences to accept news with a “best to our knowledge” caveat with everything being reported?

That’s not to suggest that media outlets should have carte blanche to recklessly publish whatever they wish. We saw the actual evils of this during last week when the New York Post blatantly accused innocent people on its front page and certain Reddit users conducted witch hunts based solely on online research. This is actually harmful, and should be the stuff of which lawsuits are comprised.

What CNN did was give us a glimpse of a news story as it was being shaped and corrected to the detriment of no one other than those who were willing to accept it without the slightest bit of critical thinking. Reporters, as fallible human beings relying on other fallible human beings as sources are understandably not infallible. Fortunately, there exists an entire smorgasbord of news outlets for us to consider and calculate a likelihood of accuracy pertaining to the information that we desire.

CNN’s performance as a news agency over the course of the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombings is exactly what we’ve asked for. The funniest part of it all is that those most angered by the misinformation that CNN presented are the ones who made the exact same mistake in believing what was being reported as gospel truth. You believed CNN just as they believed their sources.

In general, we tend to be curious to the worst possible degree. We want information on what’s happening, but we expect to receive it in the easiest manner possible, even to the point of constructing an infallible news person from a nostalgia-warped view of the past. We hearken back to this ideal that never actually existed and never could have existed under the restrictions that govern our current means of consuming news.

It’s like ordering your own platonic ideal of a filet mignon, and then complaining once it’s served to you that you have to chew it. When it comes back from the kitchen, processed to the point of pulverized pablum, you then complain that it doesn’t have the properties that you expected. The truth is that there is no steak as easy to taste as the one that you imagined. You have to chew it to get what you want.

The same is true of the news. Relying on a single outlet with so many available is just as ridiculous as holding those outlets to some arbitrary standard. The takeaway from this past week’s coverage is to embrace it all, and think in probability and likelihood as opposed to definitive truth with what’s being reported to you. If greater media accessibility begets greater media responsibility, surely this addition doesn’t completely rest on the shoulders of media outlets. It rests on us as well.

Sections of today’s media column were taken from the amalgamation of news coverage posted last Wednesday.

Coria had a nice career, winning nine titles and making just under six million in cash over the course of nine years. He, along with Lleyton Hewitt, Nikolay Davydenko and others filled the void until the next generation was ready to take over. There wasn’t one seminal moment that indicated they had arrived –Roger Federer was winning titles all over the place after his breakthrough at Wimbledon– but Coria’s loss to Rafael Nadal in the 2005 Monte Carlo final would mark the beginning of a streak that will never be repeated.

Eight years and 46 consecutive wins later, Nadal’s reign at Monte Carlo is over. The man who beat him consolidated his grip on Men’s tennis with a victory that underlined what it takes to beat Rafa on clay: relentless consistency. So often the challengers, Federer and Andy Murray chief among them, sought to end points quickly, knowing they could not combat Nadal’s bulldog demeanor from the baseline. Novak Djokovic can.

Djokovic’s backhand–the Gatling gun behind his victory–powered the Serb to a 5-0 lead in the first set. Broken monocles provided event staff with their first problem of the day. Monte Carlo is the ultimate outlier. In terms of tax havens, it’s the tops. During a high school trip to Europe, I along with a posse of middle class teenagers ate the best paninis in the world. Said sandwiches cost 10 dollars a pop. At the time that wasn’t an issue. When we ran out of money halfway through the trip, fine french bread was subject to derogatory language it didn’t deserve. Monte Carlo is an expensive place full of expensive people. They acknowledge this, making the whole thing a lot less awkward than it should be.

They love Federer. His elegance and grace go a long way for the locals. But it’s been Nadal that has dominated at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. The Spaniard’s proficiency on clay left competitors gobsmacked. Rallies that should end continued eight shots after the fact. A rain delay may have contributed to Nadal’s malaise early on, but Djokovic was full value for the opening set. He closed it out with another excellent two-handed backhand. Nadal retreated to his carefully arranged water bottles, briefly flashing a worried glance at his team in the stands.

The Guardian has one of the best sport sections in the world. ‘As it happens’ is a great feature, especially if you have to miss a couple games.

“Eurrgh, urg, arrghhh,” yells Nadal to each shot. “Hup, hup, hup” goes Djokovic as they rally extensively and beautifully for the first point of the second game.

Sometimes the things you love desert you. This was one of those times.

Nadal pushed back in the second set. On this day 10 years ago he broke into the ATP top 100 at age 16. His return from an eight month layoff has been typical Rafa. Speed bumps and success coupled with an unfailing ability to down play his chances. He lost one set this week before today’s final. The 26-year-old  would break at 2-3, capitalizing on a fit of frustration from the number one player in the world. A third set was on the horizon.

Mental strength rivals technical ability in its importance. Tennis is not an exception. Two years ago Novak would have resigned himself to going the distance against the greatest clay court player of all time. Today he didn’t. Nadal served for the set at 6-5.  Nole broke him at love and the tiebreak wasn’t close. Nadal looked like so many of his opponents over the years. Taking needless risks. Going for lines two shots into a rally.

With that, one of the greatest records in professional sports ended. It’s one tournament. Defeating the king of clay–when healthy–over the course of five sets is a monumental challenge. Either way, it’s clear where we’re heading when the French Open rolls around at the end of May. See you in Paris fellas.