The Redhead Said You Shred the Cello, and I'm Jello Baby

Congratulations to Mr. Andrew M. Tuegel for correctly naming "Bullet the Blue Sky" by Larry Mullen, Jr., Adam Clayton, and those two other guys as the Monday Song of the Day.

Part XXIV (My Response)

I think there's something to your idea that we've all grown more attached to sports of late, but I'm not sure if that's because sports mean more to people in the 21st century or because we have so many more avenues to be connected to sports. Back in the 1940's, if you were a kid living in the Mississippi River Delta, and you loved Stan Musial and the St. Louis Cardinals, you had two realisitic ways of following the Cardinals: 1. The newspaper and 2. the radio. Other than that, you might dream about making the pilgrimmage to The 'Lou (thanks Jon Heintz and Mike Griff) to watch Stan the Man, but the radio and the newspaper were your two sources of Cardinals info.

Now, though? Well, a kid could wake up and look at his phone to see how Albert Pujols did in the Cardinals game the night before. If doesn't look at his phone, there's always the computer in the family room where he can hop on Cardinals.com (contrary to popular belief it's not a site run by the Catholic church). If his family doesn't have internet, they probably have TV where he can flip over to ESPN where they are running highlights 24 hours a day. If they don't have TV, he can listen in the family car to the local sports talk radio station. Failing all of those, he can look at that dinosaur of the media world, yes, a newspaper.

I paint that picture to emphasize that maybe we don't necessarily care more about sports now, it's just that they're around so darn much. With the advent of the internet, cable tv, mobile phone technology, things like sports that might have taken up a much smaller portion of the available broadcast/media world now have the opportunity to have their own networks, blogs, iPhone apps, etc, etc. Sports might just be that girl that we don't necessarily love too much, but we put up with her, because hey, she's around.

This Is One Scene That's Going to Be Played My Way

Congratulations once again to Mr. Jeremy Masten for correctly naming "Dream On" by Aerosmith as the Sunday Song of the Day. Jeremy, I have to agree with you that "Dream On" represents Aerosmith's finest work and found its best use (in my opinion) to date in this ESPN SportsCentury "Greatest Moments" montage. "Dream On" begins around 1:37.

You see videos like that all the time on YouTube now, but I can still remember when this video premiered on ESPN in late 1999. In my 15-year old brain it was the greatest thing of all-time, narrowly besting the worthy contender of the nearly-fulfilled promise of a driver's license and a 1991 Toyota Camry with 100,000K+ miles.

I came across a the following story in the NY Times today, and the call to action is impossible to ignore, my friends.

Recently in Dallas, more than an hour before game time, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was in the locker room grinding on the Stairmaster, surrounded by several reporters — their microphones deployed, heads tilted away to avoid flying droplets of sweat.

A reporter for The Dallas Morning News, who writes a blog, asked Mr. Cuban about a bruised Dirk Nowitzki, referring to the star power forward as a “warrior” for his willingness to play while injured. “We’re not trading him to the Warriors,” said Mr. Cuban.

“Bloggers might make that point.” The comment was a bit of word play, but it illustrates how Mr. Cuban, a prolific blogger himself, feels about some of the bloggers who cover his team.

Last month Mr. Cuban sought to ban bloggers from the Mavericks’ locker room, but the National Basketball Association intervened, ruling that bloggers from credentialed news organizations must be admitted. Mr. Cuban then decided to let in any blogger — “someone on Blogspot who has been posting for a couple weeks, kids blogging for their middle school Web site or those that work for big companies.”

"Tension Over Sports Blogging" by Tim Arango of the New York Times.

You realize what this means, don't you?

I'm calling on The Blahg, Slowly Going Bald, The Jig and Twig, Osler's Razor, Living and Loving in Natal, Brazil, Prosso Speaks, Magnificent Vista, Alico Dreams, Chapter 2, Lovin' Life, Urban Cowboy, Yee of Little Faith, and everyone else out there in Blogfrica: Let's call Mark Cuban's bluff. I cannot wait to waltz into the Mavericks' locker-room while simultaneously introducing myself to Dirk Nowitzki as the Editor-in-Chief of Running Down a Dream.

My Heart Can't Wait to Meet You on the Other Side

Congratulations to Mr. Jeff McCain for correctly naming "Gravity" by Coldplay as the Wednesday Song of the Day.

Current Reading

The Amateurs: The Story of Four Young Men and Their Quest for an Olympic Gold by David Halberstam

In what will lead to the ultimate downfall of the 2007-2008 New England Patriots, ESPN has begun airing a useless series where Bill Parcells compares the Pats to great team from the NFL days of yore. If you will take a trip with me in the way-back machine to the halycon days of late 2005, you will recall that the Worldwide Leader in Sports aired a series comparing the USC team led by Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, and LenDale White to the ghosts of college football past.

There was only one tiny problem with such a programming strategy. ESPN devoted more time towards enshrining the Trojans among the all-time greats than they did breaking down the matchup between USC and the 'Horns, which, as I clairvoyantly predicted in the above-linked post, ended poorly for Leinart, Bush, White & Co.

ESPN, please continue allowing the Tuna to extol the virtues of the '07 Pats. It will make their ultimate downfall all the more enjoyable.

If You Find Yourself in That Nostalgic Rage

Jonathan referred to it in a comment on the post from earlier today, but I would be doing myself and the rest of this band a disservice if I didn't promote the heck out of The Sports Guy's record-breaking 7 hour, 4 minute chat today on ESPN.com.

For those of you who are loyal and ardent Sports Guy followers, you've probably already read the chat transcript, but for those of you who have not delved into the madness, I'm warning you.

This is like picking up War and Peace and thinking that Leo penned a tome that could be vanquished in less time than it took Howard Dean's presidential campaign to fall apart after the "Yeahhhhhh" speech in 2004.


Reading the entire transcript is going to require whatever fortitude, gumption, moxie, and mojo that you possess, but know this: You will be a better person at the end of the madness.

Just as my father constantly reminds me of the musical supremacy of the 10-year stretch from 1965-1975, my children will one day grow tired of my stories chronicling the moment when The Sports Guy vanquished the record of Rob Neyer.