why i still hate "soccer"

this is the blog in which i am supposed to eat my words. the previous blog was about why i hate soccer; a sort of “before” blog, this is the “after” blog. (also, an excerpted version of this blog has been written as a letter to the MLS, portland timbers and san jose earthquake.)  a couple words may be crunched and gulped, but most will be composted.  though i liked the timbers-earthquake game in some ways that i wouldn’t have expected, i actually liked the whole of the experience way less than i was expecting. 

going to a timbers game was not the worst thing i have ever done.  it was naturally a blast of a time.  but then again, there was never any question whether it was going to be fun.  a weekend in portland is already fun, regardless of what you do.  i could probably even have a good time at a trailblazers game.  but i won’t because i can do any number of better things in portland.  the soccer match itself was relatively entertaining (from what i saw and remember of it).  it was good enough that i might consider going a timbers game again.  but in the end, it’s still professional sports, so i wouldn’t count on it. 

the cool points :: the tenacity, the flag waving, the smoke, the chants (well, as they relate to the tenacity). the concessions and restrooms are relatively easily accessible, though the prices are still beyond ridiculous like all other sports events.  the stadium (minus it’s name) is very nice.  it is maybe the best part of the entire experience.  it’s cozy inside and sits squarely in the middle of town in between other buildings, like you would expect in the days of forbes field.

the not cool points :: it’s still soccer, which i will forever maintain is a game, not a sport.

the fact that the players of that game love taunting and arrogance more than most sports gives me a little chuckle. they talk tough and then feign injuries to get penalties. it’s on par with the NBA in the ridiculousness factor. if i wanna watch something sling shit and then duck and wallow around on the floor, i will go to the zoo and watch monkeys.  until the refs start allowing the guys who talk shit to get that shit beaten out of them, it is not a sport, it’s a game played by it’s own arbitrary rules. 

but i made that point before. the ultimate question was whether it was a good time?  i don’t know.  interesting to every end, but good depends on your tastes.

i conceded all my morals by wearing a ducks hat (because it was green).  that hat has been useful and comes with it’s own history lesson, but it is now forever retired.  there will be a good bye ceremony to the hat for anyone interested in attending.  (on a side note, during this same weekend trip i also decided i am not a beavers fan. but the only factor in that decision that relates to this blog is the part of my being purely a mike riley fan and the sportsmanlike, respectable, blue collar, fan appreciative nature type aspects of the program he has instilled at oregon state.) 

of the many discussions that could start around the nature of the activities at jeld-wen field, i  will say this: it is as close to the atmosphere of the denver broncos in kansas city during the john elway era as a rabid sports fan should be able to find. that’s saying a lot, but coming from me is not intended to be a compliment.  this is the kind of environment where an obnoxious fan of the opposing team stands a very real chance of being beaten to death.  and when it does happen, it will happen with very little consequences because professional sports are very profitable.  and as i frequently say, laws are only created based on profitability factors, not things like public safety.  as if the government cares if a person gets beaten to death for being a drunken idiot.  still, the organization and the public representatives of portland would put on their game face and have many condolences and apologies and claim to work to prevent it from ever happening.  but the reality of it is that the consequences themselves refocus people’s priorities until the incident is forgotten.  the law enforcer reaction is not all that necessary to the process.  and any bad incident would soon be forgotten because the rate of violence in america is even more distracting.  sad stories are everywhere. they have a ten minute shelf-life. only if the person killed were in some way connected to an important person in society, then we might remember for a longer time, but basically it gets swept under the rug.  and the nature of a society like that is not one i want to be complicit in supporting. 

let’s think for a minute about the nature of this in relative terms. the tenacity is great. the spirit is refreshing. the nature of the chants aren’t even necessarily reproachable.  but!  the difference between a right to free speech and abuse can be a fine line.  and as the rabble rouser, i do have some responsibility to grant someone the right to speak how they feel.  thus, i run the risk of sounding like a stuffy old bureaucrat that never gets out of the office. remember public enemy’s fear of a black planet when the dude calls in says, “how was it?  it was one of the most appalling things i have ever seen. there were gentleman on either side of the stage holding fake uzis.”  i need to be careful here to not sound like that guy. 

chants, led by cheerleaders, that encourage obscenities shouted at the opposing teams fans, flipping the middle finger and all else is fine. the san jose players thrived on that, they wanted it. and from i heard in the pre-game, the san jose fans thrived on it coming toward them. but for it to be sanctioned by the organization is obscene!  every time i have been seen drunk sports fans insulting each other there was a fight.  i have been in a stadium of 80,000 people shouting obscenities at each other.  it is a scary environment.  i am pretty sure, the portland timbers do not want to see a fight involving hundreds or thousands of people.  when an opposing fan or player does get killed one day at a timbers game, then this can be proof that the timbers, the city of portland, and even the MLS, don’t care about the fans or consider potential virus to be a problem.

making it more compelling of a story is to consider why this behavior happens.  is soccer an intrinsically violent sport?  i never believed this, but maybe now can start to. while i do believe that cockiness can inspire resentment, soccer players being more cocky than your average athlete would, by logic, be target to violent acts.  but there should be no logical reason why soccer is more violent than football or hockey.  essentially soccer is not much different than the modern version of lacrosse, which is only one step away from games like golf with a subdued quiet clap, fingertip to the palms.  there is nothing intimidating about the nature of soccer, so there is no reason to expect the fans to react differently. 

what i am more likely to presume goes back to along the lines of the last blog about the MLS being a “soccer” league with teams masquerading as a “futbol” league.  i think american soccer fans are just trying to mimic the rest of the world’s soccer games and compete for what is big, relevant news.  and the rest of the world soccer fans have been known to be violent on occasion.  however, that situation has nothing to do with soccer, and everything to do with national pride.  some countries can only afford to field one national team. so when that one game comes it’s a huge deal versus the hated neighboring country.  then the stadium is filled with 100,000 fans that earn $1 day from some foreign corporation.  and then if these poor people have to watch their national representatives, who earn exorbitant salaries, lose to the hated opponent, then a little bloodshed makes a lot of sense.  that’s their identity.  it’s a very real war.  these elements don’t exist in american sports.  we have hundreds of professional sports leagues and field more teams in the olympics than most of the other countries combined.  we don’t have to worry about losing a medal or a championship because there is always tomorrow in the next event.  but, turn the tables and say that all of the united states only had one football team and the only game that mattered was the super bowl versus russia.  i would expect people to die in that situation.  as it is, i don’t expect people to die at american sporting events.  but then again there is always the next idiot like at the boston marathon to steal the headlines.  so how true is my point?  needless to say, if someone had been killed in portland on sunday, it would have been forgotten in boston on monday.  in any case, americans still rank pretty highly on the dumb list.  so we stoop to the level of what is exciting in other places.

then there was the irony that brings the entire story into it’s cohesive whole. i spent the afternoon with a friend who lives in snob hill, a short walk from the soccer field.  she complained often about how she will never find a boyfriend until she moves to a different neighborhood because all the men are gay.  so now, in the same neighborhood, i watch a game in which a san jose player gets ejected and then calls a timbers player gay on tv.  it makes for a perfect news story in this modern age.  it makes the next meeting of the two teams all the more profitable.  so, the “strong stand” of the earthquakes organization is nothing but smoke and mirrors. the league wants controversy. it sells tickets. and that gets sponsors.  being that violence is also quite profitable in america, the more offensive the insult the better for business.  the MLS surely feels desperate and needs to pull out all the tricks to succeed against so many other sports leagues.  but this whole “beacon of diversity, community and equality” that the earthquakes press release touts is a laugh.  they do not seem serious by giving a three game suspension.  to send a real message, give a season long ban.  for the love of god, shoeless joe jackson did nothing wrong and he’s still banned sixty years after he died!  alan gordon gets a three game suspension and that’s taking a tough stand!  show him the door!   oh, but no, that would remove all the tension and make the rematch less compelling.  and then the earthquakes would be losing their striker and, as such, would not be a contender for the MLS cup.  so if the organization doesn’t want to be serious, the MLS should put them on probation.  however, responsible actions would involve integrity and business doesn’t thrive when integrity is taken into consideration.  one business owner can’t put his friend and business partner out of work. it’s not going to be good for business.

we now have a system in place to completely allow free speech in respect to the timbers army chanting “fuck you!” to the other teams fans, but alan gordon can’t call someone gay.  the hypocrisy is killing me.  the timbers, the earthquake and the MLS are more guilty of inciting violence than alan gordon is of being homophobic. and until recieves an equivalent punishment or some serious action is undertaken, i most certainly will not watch another MLS game. 

might i also add that a bar in the neighborhood also had a sandwich board that read “i like my beer like i like my violence. domestic.”  and in corvallis, a beavers fan told me he hates nothing more than the ducks and the only time he cheers for them is when the plane is going down.  hearing someone be called gay was far from the worst thing i heard all weekend.

this is why i say the game was interesting.  deep and compelling, but in the end i only know the names of two players and that’s because of the sensationalist news ctories that keep being created around the supposed homophobic slur.  the probability is not too good that i will have any knowledge of how many games the timbers win this year or who wins the MLS cup. i already forgot who won the world series last year, why will i care about this year’s soccer final?

and why would i be inclined to go back?  i can drink a $4 beer at any bar in portland and watch a game on a tv.  much better of an experience than not being able to see the game because of spending most of the game buying $8 beer.  i want a sport where i can pay $5 to sit close enough to see the sweat, and not be bothered with other activities so that i can watch every play, down to every juke and hesitation.  that’s why i never have any intention of going to a blazers game, but can watch every EOU basketball game.  and the price itself isn’t the biggest issue.  it’s the primadonna players that bring in more viewers.  it’s the support of rich, stuffy bureaucrat owners.  like the music scene the size of coachella necessarily means that it doesn’t need my support.  the trailblazers do fine without me in attendance.  the timbers will continue to do fine without me.  but i do know that my attendance at a few EOU basketball games has made at least a little difference.  so even a free ticket to sit behind the timbers or the blazers bench, is not as cool as if i paid the $10 to sit behind the EOU bench.  that makes a greater impact, it’s a more rewarding experience.  plus, EOU fans at least have some sportsmanship.  the portland timbers have about as much as kansas city chiefs fans did in the 90s, before they became irrelevant.  now soccer is trendy is kansas city and all of the rowdy fair weather fans go to that soccer team’s games.  someday, soccer won’t be as trendy in america as it is today, though in a sports starved market like the northwest i expect the timbers will always be an exception. nonetheless, there will come a time when having put forth so much as a fan will be less of an investment and more of an expense.

but was it a good time?  yes.  it was a good time.  but next time i will go to the bender festival at star theatre instead.  two of my favorite bands at a garage festival, which was rare for even portland, not to mention will not happen in la grande for about 250 years was a dumb thing to skip when i would rather go see an EOU soccer game than the timbers anyway.

baseball hall of famers: shoeless joe jackson, pete rose, willie aikens

blog two of the rabble rouser hall of fame baseball inductees. 

check out the mamie "peanut" johnson blog here. 

shoeless joe jackson (1887-1951) :: an absolute abomination

            considering his upbringing, it is a miracle shoeless joe wasn’t a child victim of the early century pre-labor unions workforce. while working in mills, he was paid to play for various mill’s teams as young as 13. he broke a players arm with a fastball, and was then relegated to the outfield. he was given a bat named black betsy, and his hitting prowess made him known around the leagues. he didn’t get his nickname from being a poor child, rather blisters on his feet forced him to take his shoes off during a game. he rose to the majors quickly, by the age of 21, when he was signed by connie mack to the philadelphia athletics.

as a player, shoeless joe seems to have the resume to be considered among the best.  he played 12 years, though technically eight full seasons in the majors, not a long time for hall of fame credentials, but he did have 1770 hits in that short span.  his career average of .356, ranks him with the third-best hitting percentage in major league history.  his hitting .408 as a rookie in 1908 was only the second-best batting average that season, but still the sixth-highest single-season average since 1901 and the record for rookies. he won a world championship with the white sox in 1917 by hitting .307 vs the new york giants. also again in 1919, but let’s get back to that. in that most lists and statistical measures rank shoeless joe in the top of many categories and that babe ruth claimed to have learned how to hit from watching shoeless joe, we can say that he was most likely the best player of his era, i.e. the most famous which would logically preclude the hall of “fame”.   so why is shoeless joe not in the hall of fame?

coming back from world war I, joe had a strong season in 1919 and his white sox were heavily favored to beat cincinnati in the world series. he hit .375 in the series, but the white sox lost. during the 1920 season, he was again hitting well, over .380, when the commissioner banned shoeless joe from baseball for being part of a scandal to have fixed the previous world series, thus cutting short his hall of fame career and making him automatically ineligible for enshrinement.

to hit .375 in the world series, with a record of 12 hits (which still stands), and had a perfect fielding perentage, it would seem that shoeless joe wasn’t really trying to lose the game. but there are newspaper accounts and court testimony (that also seem to be rather fixed) that make jackson guilty of conspiring to allow cincinnati to score runs.

the “say it ain’t so, joe” story is that such a scandal is apparently good for a lifetime ban, whether it was true or not. but as famous as he was as a player, as infamous as he was as a liquor store operator after baseball, jackson also has been depicted in the films eight men out, field of dreams and the natural.

triples are the early century version of home runs. the first 50 or 60 years of baseball was known as the “dead ball era” in which pitchers reigned supreme, bats were heavy and fences were really far away. though not many home runs were hit in those days, the fences being far back allowed balls hit into the alleys to help the runner advance extra bases. therefore, triples were a rather common statistic in place of home runs. shoeless joe retired with 167 triples, one less than rogers hornsby, two more than roberto clemente for 26^th place on the all-time list.  someone someday might hit more than 167 triples, but it’s unlikely. there are currently two players in the major leagues today with more than 100 triples. if you asked me if 26^th on the all-time home run list would put a player eligible for the hall of fame list, i would say no doubt, especially in conjunction with an otherwise stellar record, humble background and no evidence of any fixing on his part. he was not in cahoots with the mob. 

free shoeless joe!

pete rose (1941-present) :: the guy that gets made an example of

            if i can make a case for joe jackson being eligible based on baseball merits alone, despite that he is also innocent, let’s suppose he really was guilty and a jerk. would he still be elgible based on being one of the very best players ever?

i am a pirates fan, as my love of the special marks they made at cornerstone points of new eras in baseball will attest. that being the case, the cincinnati reds are the nemesis, not a team to love. the big red machine stole most of the bucs glory, particularly in the 1970s, thanks mostly to charlie hustle. it’s hard not to respect the tenacity.

there’s a fifty-fifty chance that i would find pete rose a legitimately fun loving prankster, or just a downright jerk. it would be no doubt that his attitude has more to do with his lifetime ban from major league baseball than the crime for which he is charged.  betting on baseball games?  there are plenty of people that have done it over the years that aren’t banned from sports.  though when proven is kind of beomes a career derailer. unless, you’re someone like michael jordan!

there is no legitimate reason pete rose should not be in the baseball hall of fame. being a jerk has never been part of the exclusionary criteria before.  pete has more hits than anyone.  of all the “insurmountable” records in baseball, the career hit record seems most unlikely to be broken. (well, maybe second to 309 triples, but then again pete rose also has a very high number of triples for the modern era - 136).  he has the record for most games played and most at-bats.  not only was rose the face of the most dominant franchise for an entire decade, once he got traded, it altered the balance of power and his next team was in the world series twice in four years. at a decade and a half of mvp-caliber career, rose was every bit the counterpart of carl yazstremski in the american league as far as star value was concerned during the same years of longevity.  his reward should be the same.  but the awesome caveat in this case is that rose doesn’t need to give a damn.  secretly, though, one would imagine he really does.  he doesn’t need to be included because he ultimately doesn’t need some stuffy tightwads appreciation anyway.  he knows he was the best of his era.  i suppose he can act like the best if he wants.  the rabble rouser will honor him if only beause cooperstown should and won’t.  if i were pete rose, that would mean way more.

willie aikens :: the guy that gets made an example of

            the 1980s were infamously the cocaine years, in the u.s. generally, but also in baseball.  it would get even worse in the 90s in other areas like growth hormones and such, but heavy tolls were paid.  in the late 70s, the pittsburgh pirates, with john milner, were the first in a wave of teams to be ripped apart by drug scandals.  john milner got punished, then lost his life to an overdose in the 1980s, and so did pitcher rod scurry in the 1990s.

from then on, player after player was involved in some kind of fracas.  in the arly 80s, the kansas city royals got particularly torn apart with drug buys that prompted the league to mandate trades that sent four players to separate teams after short prison sentences: willie aikens to the toronto blue jays, jerry martin to the new york mets, vida blue to san francisco. willie wilson was allowed to stay, ultimately finishing the last couple years of a long career in oakland and chicago.  jerry martin was soon selling used cars, aikens was on expensive coke binges until he landed a 20 year sentence for selling crack to an undercover female cop in his home.

          in some respects, 20 years in prison could be blessing.  he saw many more succumb, including his former teammate and born-again christian darrell porter.  porter died of a coke-induced heart attack in 2002 at the age of 50. but on the other hand, some players like daryl strawberry had similar lives yet got only supervised probation. sort of like michael vick wasn’t the first, nor most prominent dog fighter in the south. he was just the guy whose attitude got the better of him and he became made the example.  even michael vick only got a couple years.  in willie aikens case, he was busted for a few grams and ended up serving 14 years of a 20 year sentence. surely lots of stuff that isn’t counted or known, but isn’t that the case with anyone who ultimately gets busted?  there must be more of a political reason why the penalty was so stiff.

michael vick could probably never do anything redeeming enough to become a rabble rouser hall of famer.  but willie aikens, man!  he was supposed to be the next reggie jackson, and even had one of the more epic of world series performances, but he was humbled as a has-been, reformer, ex-con.  he took his lumps in stride.  he learned his lessons.  

he can now teach us.

why I hate “soccer”

i am supposedly going to eat my words on this, but man i can't stand soccer.  dj yeti has been saying for months that he is taking me to a portland timbers game and that i will like it.  my point is that while i may like the experience, i like any experience in portland and that does not translate to me caring about soccer at all.

generally, i am a rock and roll fan, and care about sports only on a fundamental level, like amateur sports.  but the sports and the concerts i attend are of similar stature. so, i will start with some rock stories.  i once saw ratt in concert at an outdoor ampitheatre for $20 or $30 or something outrageous. they were about as good as any other hair metal band of the day. worth listening to from time to time, but never worth the time, trip and cash to see some exorbitant stage show live in concert.  a couple years later, stephen pearcy was out as singer of the band and then joined a band called arcade, who was unknown and traveled the bar circuits.  i saw arcade for free at the bottleneck in lawrence, kansas.  it was a fabulous show and then i started then to attend primarily concerts in bars.  a couple years later, when the band live was at their peak of popularity, i was treated to the worst concert i have ever seen at the omaha civic center.  i was so nauseated, i left after four songs and puked in the parking lot.  luckily, i got in for free and up near the stage because the opening band had put me on the guest list.  it was only worth going to see that opening band but the crowd hated them.  it was a notoriously miserable experience and i did not even ahve to pay to get in, but i have not been to an arena concert ever since.  i vowed to never spend more than $20 for a concert ticket again and have never really been disappointed with a concert since. funny how that works.  so, when other djs talk about expensive festivals like sasquatch and coachella, no matter how many bands i like are in the lineup, i never even think about going. there is nothing to love about an event that takes me miles from the stage and costs loads more money. i'd rather see a band like tartufi for free while sitting closer to the singer than the rest of the band and not having to worry about getting to the bathroom or standing in long lines for beer, etc.  a trip to sasquatch would be a vicious headache for me.  i'd rather save the $350 and fund my own concert.

the same concept applies to the sports industry.  i am not a fan of anything "big money" and while football, baseball, basketball and hockey are all big money sports, they do at least have minor league versions that i love, while i detest the major versions.  well, soccer is in the same boat.  they do have minor league versions, but up until recently soccer has not been popular at all in america.  you think that would make me like it, right?  wrong!

the first problem i have with "soccer" is it's definition. when i think of "soccer" i think of something that is a bastardization of "futbol".  for me, that is what is more commonly known as indoor soccer.   it's played on a short field and resembles arena football.  i love that kind of soccer, much like i love arena football way more than the worthless nfl.  outdoor soccer, as we've known forever, should actually be called "futbol"  but here in america, we call it soccer because of the confusion of american football.  i never used to have a problem with the name soccer (primarily due to not caring) but with a league like the MLS, with the S standing for "soccer", most of the teams name themselves as if they play in european "football" (dc united? real salt lake? please!)   this makes the MLS seem like they have a serious identity crisis.  is it soccer or is it football?  decide that and then i will be closer to paying attention.  but when sports are all about the money and they only care about looking cool, it creates an identity crisis. that makes it way too cool for me. 

then there are the stadiums, one of the more annoying aspects of sports for me. the portland timbers play in civic stadium (or more accurately, multnomah stadium) where the portland beavers used to play baseball.  the fact that they play in the stadium serves as a sad reminder of the fact that portland’s fair weather fans couldn’t support a baseball team that had been there since the 1800s.  but supporting the timbers is different because the timbers are new and soccer is trendy.  (i do understand there were other soccer teams going back to the 70s that called themselves the timbers, but that is not the 1800s, and does not really count since the trendy version began in 2009.)  to further throw insult onto the fire, the stadium has been renamed after some company that paid for a portion of the remodeling costs.  this happens in every city, and it serves as a reminder to me not to enter the stadium.  think safeco field?  stupidest name for a stadium ever!  well, no that argument is so ten years old.  i just found out that comiskey park is now called u.s. cellular field or some such crap.  when these kinds of abominations occur i have no respect for either the company that needs the shameless promotion or the organization that provides that promotion and cease supporting either.   i paid $35 for a ticket to a game in the opening season of safeco, the most expensive, to sit seven rows away from the mariners on deck circle such that i could have plunked a-rod in the head if i had known to hate him yet.  moreover, the mariners were an awful team and finished in last place at the end of the season, yet the stadium was full of people paying those exorbitant prices.  so big money sports, is like the big money music industry, repulsive. needless to say, i wouldn't be caught dead in that monstrous mess of $500 million scrap metal called safeco ever again. 

but dj yeti claims, "i’ve never been to a real socer game. and will love it once i do".  not true. i went to many kansas city wizards games. and they were a blast.  i loved those games.  exactly what i wish for are more sports experiences exactly like that, so to suggest that there is something bigger and better does not appeal to me.  the kansas city wizards played in arrowhead stadium, in which the fair weather kansas city fans never went because soccer wasn’t popular at all in the 1990s.  even when the wizards were winning the MLS cup, kansas city fans didn’t know about it.  the wizards would sometimes have less than 1000 people inside the 80,000 seat stadium, even when they were a good team.  the less people showed up, the more i liked it.  to me, an underrated sport is something worth watching.  for $5 from a scalper, i could get in the first five rows to see the best soccer players in america.  that was uber cool!   certainly in comparison to my next year's trip with a friend wanting me to go to safeco field.   now that i have established that i liked the old, unpopular MLS, dj yeti tells me that portland is different experience than the soccer games in kansas city.  but what i hear from the rabid soccer fans in kansas city now is exactly how i hear soccer games described in portland.  there is an entire cult of fans and rituals behind the team now known as sporting kansas city and getting tickets are impossible.  kansas city does likeevery other city and builds a separate stadium for each sports franchise.  that pisses me off more than the naming rights to the stadium.  ever since the astrodome and metrodome went away, the policy of housing multiple teams in the same building has died.  in other words, efficiency has died, wastefulness has thrived.   and for some reason, this sells way more tickets.   forgive me for not supporting that.  and, as is symbollically correct, sporting kansas city (as they’re now known) play in the suburbs.  i don’t call them sporting kansas city.  i call them sporting bonner springs.  and i’ve never once in my life supported the idea of outward expansion in the country side, so i don’t support abominations like spkc park or the nascar track across the street.  the timbers are slightly cooler to not be in the suburbs, though if they could get someone to build them a better stadium in the suburbs, i am sure they would take it.  but they still play in a stadium named after some corporation i don't care to support by even mentioning their name.  

this is the essence of why i hate big money sports.  modern american soccer takes the big money lessons and runs away with them.  i haven't even gotten into aspects like soccer players flopping for penalties.  rolling around on the ground like a monkey to try to get a penalty called on the opponent is a sad excuse of a strategy.  that is not a sport, it's a game.  real sports like rugby and hockey decide the winner as the last man standing.  that pansy acting doesn't go over well when the refs let you beat the hell out of the perpetrator.  what soccer players do was probably invented by shakespeare.  

but more to the current situation, it's not like i just decided off-handedly that soccer doesn't seem cool.  i grew up in a city that had more professional sports than the entire state of oregon has and i enjoyed them all, until they became unreasonable in their quest to be profitable.  i have a lot of experience going to soccer games and i know what i like.  indoor soccer at kemper arena, for sure!!  spkc, or whatever it's called, park, never!   i will say for the timbers, at least they name themselves like an american team, not the sporting europe clone project crap. 

as i said to begin with, i have been told that it won't matter that i don't like soccer, the experience in portland is still awesome.  i have no doubt that a portland timbers game is a better thing to do than most things in most other cities.  maybe i can get great portland beer and food at the stadium.  but i can do that all over portland.  if one were to put portland beer and food carts at the bonner springs soccer stadium, it might entice me to go.  but why go pay some rediculous price for a sport i care nothing about to pay even more for the rogue beer i could just buy at the rogue brewery or just go to the big ass sandwiches food cart after one a great free bar concert?   i do know that i would rather pay $20 to see major junior hockey winterhawks in the playoffs than i would get into a timbers game for free.  but, yeah, it's a trip to portland, so it'll be fun anyway.  doesn't mean i will come away knowing any of the players names or ever wondering when the season ends or how well the timbers do in the season overall.  i won't keep track of it because i don't care about soccer. that wouldn't change even if i got to make out with the cheerleaders, if the timbers even have any. 
i don't know how i am supposed to eat the words that i have spent 25 years conceptualizing, but go ahead and try your best to convert me timbers. 

and ps note: this concept does not apply to the women's soccer league. for obvious racist reasons it is not a big money sport, even though the talent and entertainment level is the same. 

mamie "peanut" johnson & other women playing men's sports

in conjunction with the opening of baseball, four baseball players have been inducted into the rabble rouser hall of fame. the other four are coming in the next blog.  the most important of the four undoubtedly is mamie “peanut” johnson.  this, however, is not a blog about johnson, per say, as much as about political condition.

in principle, i do not like to single individual people out for iconic status in society, but younger generations do need to start somewhere. i think of mamie johnson in the same way i think of rosa parks or jackie robinson, and don’t see why mamie doesn’t have the same renowned status.

nothing against rosa parks, she must have been an amazing woman and was certainly the fuel for the montgomery bus boycott.  however, with so much attention paid to individuals, like herself or dr. king, public knowledge of the movements overall lessen in time.  lore often transforms itself to celebrating the person over the movement.  check answers.com or yahoo answers for people asking questions about who was the first black person to sit at the front on the bus. people legitimately think it was rosa parks!  to be fair, my memory of school seems to be that we were only ever told about her. in heaping all the praise on rosa parks, we lose sight of all the black women before her that had been arrested for the same thing. these movements happened by design and with a deep cast of characters.  it is not as if rosa parks walked onto a bus one day and suddenly decided, “ah hell, i ain’t going back there. i’m sick of this shit!” and then got famous for it. 

Irene Morgan

that particular moment had been craftily organized by civil rights freedom fighters for over a year. several other times in 1955 alone, when the time was right, the group would execute a plan to make a stand against the man. rosa parks happened to be the chosen person that day, and had been preparing to take that seat for over a month. but all the other women that did as much to integrate the buses in the south get completely lost in the mix, for example: irene morgan eleven years before on a greyhound in virginia.  check out her story and in relation to the historical movement here. and then there’s claudette colvin, mary lousie smith, aurelia browder. what happens to their memories when the only name anyone remembers is rosa parks?    

a smilar case is true with jackie robinson. i am not doubting that he had an incredible amount of bravery to be the first black person to step onto a white ballfield, but there were many more before him that sacrificed just the same.  roberto clemente, the greatest baseball player of all time in kid yoshida’s estimation, had been brought to the brooklyn dodgers well before robinson. branch rickey wanted to bring clemente to the major league club, however the politics of the situation wouldn’t allow that. consider the racism within the racism that many african-americans did not want a puerto rican to become the first “black” baseball player.  at the same time, rickey faced resistance from other owners who also wanted the glory of breaking the color barrier. so, it became a game of backdoor deals and money grubbers dictating history – an all too frequent occurrence – rather than history naturally playing itself out.  it could just as easily have been clemente, larry doby or even satchell paige to be the first to walk out onto a field.  luckily, those particular people do not have a problem being recognized in history.  of course, they also do not get major hollywood treatment the way robinson has, but i digress to the true point.  we should not lose sight of what the times were all about and certainly not forget the unsung heroes.

in the case of jackie robinson breaking the color barrier, him and the other unsung heores played in the negro leagues or south of the border.  the negro leagues get about as much attention as the wartime women’s baseball league, basically the status of a cute footnote. but what else they do is show the complexities of the social structure and perhaps even that racism is still just as rampant today as ever before.

baseball today, as i say with every other major sport, still hasen’t taken women seriously.  they’ve always only been used for publicity stunts. the women’s baseball league should have been a wake up call, if not in the 1940s, then when hollywood showed it off in a league of their own.  however, hollywood did not paint them as true baseball players, as much as tomboy rabble rouser types.  today, we still do not take women in sports seriously and segregate them to their own leagues, which fans hardly pay attention to compared to the men’s leagues.  i will at least congratulate mark cuban on saying that he would be willing to give brittney griner a shot at playing for the mavericks. that would be amazing. and mark cuban is just the kind of guy to tell the other owners to go to hell if they were to resist.

the backwards and racist business of professional sports today, looks even more archaic when compared to the negro leagues. the negro leagues probably would have allowed white players, had any white players ever been willing to risk their shot at the majors by defecting.  but for the negro leagues, it wouldn’t have mattered.  it’s not like the negro leagues needed more or better players. the teams had rosters deeper than most major league teams besides the yankees, and the lore of players like stachell paige, josh gibson, cool papa bell and others have stood up very well in historical hindsight.  but what the negro leagues also allowed, if even for a publicity stunt, was women to play on the same field.  so, this is where mamie “peanut” johnson comes into the picture.

when 5’ 2” mamie johnson arrived to play for the indianapolis clowns in 1953, hank baylis of the kansas city monarchs said she looked like a peanut on the mound.  the name stuck in an endearing way, and so did the fact that she struck baylis out.  she went from the poor kid upbringing in which her uncle taught her to play baseball by using tree branches, rocks and pie plates. in the end, (after having a child) she played three years in the men’s league with win-loss records of 11-3, 10-1, and 12-4 each year.  she was a dominant player, and made between $400 and $800 per month, which had to have been a decent wage in the 1950s, though far less than a fair share.  after three years, mamie left baseball to go to college before spending 30 years as an LPN.

it never is the case that one person can make a huge change. even guy fawkes did not work alone. the closest we have to a single individual in modern society trying to buck the system may be ralph nader. but even he had support along the way, and ultimately his ideas were spoken with only the hope that the future hears them.  it takes a well-run operative to make a change, not to short change rosa parks or jackie robinson, but to give some appreciation for all the others that sacrificed more for less.

think about these women in men’s sports, for starters. babe zaharias is widely considered the first female athlete, but was she really?  she was an track and field olympian, who set five world records in the same day.  she entered pro golf fairly late at the age of 27, playing in men’s PGA tour events in 1938. she later joined the LPGA and was a six-time AP female athelte of the year.  in baseball, playing for the chattanooga lookouts in 1931, 17-year-old jackie mitchell struck out babe ruth and lou gehrig back to back.  women in baseball continues today in the person of side-arm knuckleballer eri yoshida playing the last three seasons with the chico outlaws and the maui na koa ikaika.

Brittney Griner

in tennis, billie jean king beat bobby riggs in a 1973 “battle of the sexes” at the houston astrodome. in horse racing, diane crump rode phantom in the 1970 kentucky derby.  in boxing, jackie tonawanda was allowed into male boxing after a judge ruled that the boxing commission was “continuing attitudes espoused a century ago.”  she won 35 fights, lost 1, and even later worked as mohammed ali’s bodyguard.  in car racing, janet guthrie started the indy 500 in 1977 and 1978, shirley muldowney won three drag racing championships in the 70s and 80s and this year a woman named danica started pole position at the daytona 500.  in football, katie hnida was the first woman to score in division I-A for the new mexico lobos in 2003.  in ice hockey, manon rheaume played goaltender for the tampa bay lightning in 1992.  and in basketball ann meyers was signed by the indiana pacers in 1979, nancy lieberman played in the USBL in 1986 and perhaps next brittney griner for the dallas mavericks in 2014.

this is just a footnoted list of some of the women that have succeeded in men’s sports over the years. is mamie “peanut” johnson the most significant?  there was also toni stone and connie morgan in the negro leagues with her. but for the purpose of the rabble rouser hall of fame we consider mamie johnson. if we praise peanut johnson, for example, as a figurehead icon of the negro leagues or for women in sports, do we lessen the importance of the movement overall or highlight it?  she was just one player of many.  but if we have someone like her to hang onto, maybe it will interest others to read the history and give an appreciation in the team concept.  it might make us all stand up and say, “hey! there was a league that survived thirty years that allowed anyone to perform professionally." plus, if women in sports had been done almost a century ago, it’s not really progressive anymore.  major league baseball and all the other sexist professional sports would not be progressive to allow a female to participate now. they would just be about 70 years late in catching up with the precedent mamie johnson set.  there should still be a judge claiming they are “continuing attitudes espoused a century ago.” it’s all one more reason why i say on the sports show that i don’t give one rip about professional sports.  hail mamie “peanut” johnson!  trailblazer, rabble rouser. 
she struck out hank baylis and that was just the first batter she faced. 

february/march records

looking for some new music?  

here are my recommendations for the best of the february & march albums.  

a couple are older than the last two months, but you'll still wanna check em out

ambient

warm soda - someone for you (2013, castle face)

skyline pigeons – house of mysteries  (2013, retro face)

pagiins – bad things don’t (2102 ep, self released)

jenny o – automechanic (2013, holy trinity)

cave singers – naomi  (2013, jagjaguwar)

jazz

daphne lee martin – moxie  (2013, telegraph)

karen nielson – woman  (2013, self released)

blues

various artists – soul brothers (2013, concord)

willie ames - night owl (2013, self-released)

hip hop

spoken nerd – our team is going to win  (2013, self released)

rock

harper simon – division street  (2013, play it again sam)

youth lagoon - wondrous bughouse (2013, fat possum)

holiday friends – chicks (2012, self released)

unknown mortal orchestra II  (2013, jagjaguwar)

tartufi – these factory days  (2013, southern records)

public service broadcasting - the war room (2012 ep, test card)

shilos – so wild  (2013, self released)

hatebreed – divinity of purpose (2013, relapse)

voi vod – taget earth (2013, century)

the sword – apocryphon  (2012, razor & tie)