What the World Cup needs to learn from Isner and Mahut
Right away I should say that I appreciate the World Cup. I even dig soccer a bit. True, baseball is a better sport, but that really goes without saying, since it’s better than all other sports. But soccer is certainly more popular than all other sports the world over. Keep in mind, though, that Lady Gaga is popular. Popularity isn’t everything.
But I like the drama of the World Cup. What I don’t like is seeing games decided with penalty kicks. Finish. The. Game.
For those of you who don’t know who John Isner and Nicolas Mahut are, you probably don’t watch either Wimbledon or Sportscenter. Isner is American, Mahut is French, and they’re playing an entire tournament in one match. Neither of them is really highly-ranked, but the match they’re still playing is going to be famous.
You see, they started this match two days ago. Isner won the first set 6-4. Mahut won the second 6-3. They then went to tiebreaks in sets three and four, with each man winning one. And then the match was suspended for darkness (there’s only lights on Centre Court).
So yesterday they picked up the match in the fifth set.
And.
They.
Played.
All.
Day.
At Wimbledon, a five-set-match can’t end on a tiebreak. Which means you have to win the fifth by two games. Which means you must win a game on the other guy’s serve (called a service break). And these guys can’t do it anymore. (They could in sets one and two, but then they both started serving incredibly well…more than 200 aces combined for the match.)
The fifth set has now gone on longer than any other match in the history of Wimbledon. Nearly eight hours. And it was suspended a second time. As I write this, the match has resumed, and Isner just won a service game and leads 65-64 in the final set. Maybe he’ll break and this thing’ll be over.
(Update: Isner wins the final set 70-68. Think he’ll have anything in the tank for his next match?)
Keep in mind here that in a total blowout, 6-0, 6-0, 6-0, we’re looking at eighteen games. The fifth set has gone more than a hundred and twenty games.
It’s awesome. Soccer needs to learn from this. Make somebody win it in regulation. I understand ending matches on a draw at least until the championship game, and I would even argue that Wimbledon might be well-served in removing the “no winning on a tie-break in a five-setter” rule until the final match. But the World Cup should never, ever, ever, ever be decided with penalty kicks. There’s just no excuse for it. Go sudden death and make them play it out.
Argh!!!…the Baseball…it burns!!!!
Quite a weekend we had. And okay, it’s true that my face resembles Spock’s at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, after he repaired the reactor and was exposed to extreme radiation. But the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Besides, shouldn’t all real baseball fans (and coaches and assistants) look like Harvey Two-Face after a triple-header?
The problem was that we were playing baseball in the City League Tournament and June decided to show up, and it caught us unawares. Well, that and the team kept winning.
We started off Saturday morning against a tough team, with an ump who was calling a strike zone appropriate for your average five-year-old Hobbit. We outhit the other team, but they walked again and again. Bummer. But we soundly trounced the next team thanks to a homer from a certain boy who shall remain nameless but who shares a last name with me. (He homered twice and only struck out once in five games. In my unbiased opinion, he’s an easy choice for MVP. Though I do have to admit that while he might’ve been the offensive star, one of his buddies was the defensive wizard, pitching extremely effectively and making a couple of key catches of pop-ups.)
So we came to Sunday morning and were expecting to play a game. And play we did. Our boys were all of a sudden en fuego at the dish. Kids who hadn’t sniffed a hit all season were suddenly putting the ball in play. And if they didn’t reach base every time, they still brought in some runs. We even had three kids take one for the team in one game. And one of those kids got plunked twice. Tough way to get aboard, but it beats a strikeout…most of the time.
(I should also point out that Hobbit-zone-ump was not in play on Sunday.)
We also started two pitchers who hadn’t, you know, pitched at all the whole season, and they were just tremendous. I can’t recall now if it was the first or the second game we played, but all four of our pitchers absolutely slammed the door on that team, shutting them out 8-0 over five innings. You’ve gotta love it when your eight- to ten-year-old kids are getting through an inning on fewer than fifteen pitches. And this was against a team who had beaten us 11-2 or so in a game a few weeks back. Owned!
Ultimately, we ran into a very tough team in the Bronze Medal game and stood toe-to-toe with them before going down in five innings. But we softened them up for the championship game. But our boys earned that third place finish. Go Blue Sox!
Wordful Wednesday: The Castle of Llyr
Take any five-book series, and you can probably count on having strong feelings about the first and last, and then a mixture of impressions of the rest. Of course, my own opinions on The Prydain Chronicles are somewhat different, having great affection for books two and five. If anything, book one (The Book of Three), is the one I’m ambivalent about.
Well, I just finished reading book three, The Castle of Llyr, and I can honestly say that I was surprised. Now, this is probably my third or fourth reading of the book, but I honestly didn’t remember anything about it except for one particular scene. So you can imagine that I’d consider the book forgettable.
Not so! I don’t know if it was just the difference in reading it aloud to my son, but I really, really enjoyed The Castle of Llyr
this time.
The story is less complicated than the previous books, but it did something that I guess I should have expected: It focused on Taran. But, of course, it focused on Taran’s reaction to Eilonwy’s leaving Caer Dallben in order to become a Lady (she’s already a Princess, but a bit of a tomboy).
I do remember that reading The Prydain Chronicles was the first time I really identified with the idea of love and marriage being a cool thing. I just didn’t remember that those themes started to come out so early.
In this book, Taran once again grows more into manhood by accepting responsibility for someone he doesn’t really like, though the readers do like him. While Taran views Prince Rhun as a feckless fool, the reader can see that he’s really a good sort, just a bit scatterbrained and ill-equipped to be a leader. And he’s not entirely worthless, of course.
Once again, of course, Fflewddur Flam shines as my favorite character, and Gurgi as The Boy’s favorite. I prefer lines like this one:
“If there were a field with one stone in it he’d trip over it. A Fflam is patient, but there are limits!”
The Boy prefers this kind:
“Move aside heavy stone, evil, wicked little giant! Take away lockings and blockings! Or rageful Gurgi will smack your great feeble head!”
Actually, they’re both gold.
We actually finished reading this one on Amtrak Cascades on the way to Seattle. Very cool, that. But it made for a long day which capped an even longer long weekend. We were up at the crack of dawn Saturday and Sunday, taking Swimmer Son (aka The Pancake Eater) to a meet in Portland. It was a Sextathlon, where each swimmer in the various age-groups swam the same six events, and then were ranked based on their total time. The Boy was pretty happy with the huge second-place trophy he got. Check it out if you like.
And then there was the early morning wake-up for getting to Union Station on Monday. And the late night getting back.
Anyhow, I stopped into the Library yesterday and discovered that I’d lost track of some of my Hold Requests. You see, I like to request a book as soon as I decide to read it, but then set the activation date for it so that it doesn’t impact anything I’m currently working on. Then, I monitor those requests and re-set the activation date if my schedule doesn’t clear at the right time. But sometimes I get lazy and set a whole block of them to activate on May 15. And then they all show up at the Library on May 18.
So now I have five books out from the Library, and much as my common sense tells me to just return two of them, I fully intend to read all five in the next three weeks. Pending thumb-through, of course. But I think it’s going to happen. So those other two I’d recently checked out, which are actually on my To Be Read list, will just have to wait.
And so, I’ll reveal that next up is The Titan’s Curse, Book Three in the Percy Jackson series. It was the easiest choice among the five.
Hockey, Ice Skating, Teach Dad?, Cashew Cream, Validation
So I was definitely rooting for USA to win that Hockey game yesterday, but I can’t deny it was an awesome game. And I definitely would’ve felt worse for Canada missing out on the gold.
The Pancake-Eating Son has suddenly become enamored of hockey. He so enjoyed the Winterhawks game I took him to that he told me hockey was now his favorite sport.
In fact, he told me he wasn’t really interested in baseball anymore (!) but would rather play hockey.
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I figured he should try ice skating first. So, I packed him into the car and drove out to Sherwood Ice Arena. (We can get there in about four traffic lights. I love taking the back roads).
Long story short, hockey has fallen out of favor somewhat, though the boy still wants to take in a few more Hawks games.
Now, if we lived in Alaska, I’d have had the boy skating at age three or so, so he’d be like his old man and not really remember learning to skate. And he’d absolutely be playing hockey. It’s just an awesome game to play, and no other sports accomplishment feels as good as scoring a goal (at least in my experience).
(Confession: I’ve never relished the idea of watching outdoor hockey like my dad did so many times.)
But back to the skating. We got there about an hour before the public skating session was over, so we got to pay a reduced price. And we got our skates on and stepped onto the ice. Immediately, I knew something was wrong. The skates were too dull. Or the ice was too slick (it had just been resurfaced).
Or perhaps it was just that it’d been, oh, eighteen years or so since I’d been skating. Of course, it didn’t take too long for me to get my feet under me and get a feel for how the blade goes on the ice. I even managed to flip around backward and cross-over and stuff. Sweet. And I remembered how to execute a good hockey stop (spraying the boy with ice shavings).
But once I got the boy out there, he couldn’t make the transition. And I’ve never taught an eight-year-old to skate. A forty-year-old, yes, but more on that later.
There were tears. And petitions that could we please go home? But I had paid a bit of money to get us in there, so I had the boy just watch his old dad skate awhile. Eventually he manned up and ventured out with me again, and we made one complete circuit of the ice together. There was even some grinning.
Still, I’m not sure if he wants to go again. But if we do, we’ll have to bring a photographer with us.
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As I mentioned above, Dad was the designated Hockey Parent back when I played. And in Anchorage, that means outdoor practice and outdoor midweek games. In short, it means dedication. The weekend games, played at Ben Boeke Ice Arena or UAA were a bit easier on a parent. But the outdoor ones made you think of “The Cremation of Sam McGee”.
One of the best parts of an outdoor game is that sometimes, Dad would take me out for donuts and cocoa after a game. Even if we lost. Which was most of the time.
The thing I really admire about my dad, looking back, is that he tried to learn the game so he could engage with me on it. To the point of taking to skates at age forty-and-then-some. I had already, with help of another friend, taught a third friend to skate (so we could play one-on-two hockey, which is awesome), so how hard could it be to teach Dad?
Hard. Especially on Dad. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still sore from some of the bruises he got. Because ice, while being nice for skating, tends toward hard when you fall on it. And I’m not sure we outfitted him with proper pads or anything. Pretty much just skates. (BTW, Dad, do you still have those skates? I’d take them off your hands if you do, if they’d fit my big flippers.)
Looking back, it’s probably good we never tried to teach Dad to downhill ski. Because we weren’t very good teachers.
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Completely out of left field here, but we discovered that Cashew Cream really works. Rewinding a bit, recall that we’re a semi-veg family. We try to eat meatless fairly often. So we tend to give Vegetarian/Vegan cookbooks a look pretty often. Well, one of the magical veg ingredients I saw in one such volume was Cashew Cream. Basically, you make thick Nut Milk with raw cashews. And you use it in place of cream.
Well, we made some pretty terrific semi-veg Potato-Leek soup (we used Chicken Broth because that’s what was in the pantry, but it’d work with Imagine Foods’ No-Chicken Broth). The Cashew Cream worked beautifully and even looked like cream when I mixed it in.
So now I’ll have to look for other ways to use this magical ingredient.
Kind of a long post today. But I haven’t posted on Monday in a long time.
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And the long post continues. Mental Floss’s Morning Cup of Links had one I had to pass along, and through the magic of embedding, you can just stay right here and appreciate it. It’s a short film titled “Validation,” and I found it surprisingly touching. I guess I’m just a softie.
Olympics
As The Fair Elaine mentioned today, the Olympics have seriously impacted our normal evening schedule. So I thought I’d chime in briefly with my thoughts.
Bottom line: I like events with objective results. Give me, any day, Snowboard Cross or Super G or the Downhill or Speed Skating. I’ve enjoyed, in the past, some of the Ice Skating, but I just prefer it all coming down to the clock.
BTW, Snowboard Cross is my new favorite event. All the downhill skiing events are also awesome, though.
I also think Curling is pretty cool.
That’s about it, I guess. What are your favorite events?
Ninja Warrior and Competition
Quick comment on the Super Bowl here. Trivial Pursuit is better.
(We managed to miss the onside-kick that sparked the Saints’ getting back in the game. DVR good. And WTG, Saints.)
So it’s getting toward baseball season here, and I’m not just going to wax poetic about how much better baseball is than football, because there’s really little left to be said, and it’s so manifestly true.
No, instead I’d like to opine a bit about competition. I often hear from other parents that they want their boy (I’m being boy-centric here, because I am one, and I have one) to be in a non-competitive league. I. Just. Don’t. Understand. This.
Okay, so I do understand wanting to give kids a low-pressure way to experience sports. And maybe it’s a good entry point, or a toes-in-the-water point for kids who probably aren’t wired for sports competition.
But I think there’s something we miss when we remove competition, and when all the kids get trophies. As Dash put it in The Incredibles, after his mom (Elastigirl) commented that “everyone is special”:
“Which is the same as saying nobody’s special.”
Now, I’m all for rewarding effort and not just performance, and I can see the argument for a trophy being a good carrot to dangle, even if it’s not earned by performance so much as participation.
But shouldn’t our kids be learning to lose well? Learning that, hard as you try, you just might be on a pretty lousy team? That it’s okay to lose if you tried your best?
The thing is, in teaching our kids about losing well, we also get to teach them how to win well. And they learn how great it feels to win.
(Incidentally, this is why I generally don’t let the Boy win. I want him to feel good when he beats me. Though I do sometimes handicap myself to level the playing field. But within those strictures, I still try to win.)
As I’ve written before, we’re big fans of Sasuke, known in America as Ninja Warrior. It’s a lot like ABC’s Wipeout, only a hundred times cooler.
It’s basically the world’s toughest obstacle course, but it’s not just the obstacles that make it cool. It’s the fact that they might go SEVEN YEARS WITHOUT A WINNER!!!!!
On Wipeout, there’s always a winner of the $50k prize. Twenty-four start the competition, and one of them wins it.
On Ninja Warrior, one hundred people start the competition, and most of the time, one hundred are eliminated. Sometimes only two or three even make it past Stage One (of Four). Oh, and the prize is less than $20k.
And they keep making the course harder. If you look back at the first winner (there have been two winners out of more than twenty competitions), his course was much easier than the second winner’s.
But of course, sometimes somebody does win. For instance, The Pancake Eating Boy’s current hero, Makoto Nagano. Here’s a video of him completing all four stages back on Sasuke 17 (the video lacks G4’s English translation, or you’d get the impression that the announcer has just as big a Man Crush on Nagano as The Boy does):
The Boy gets seriously emotionally invested in watching his Main Dude on Sasuke. When Nagano fails, the Boy is very put out.
I think it says something about the Japanese that they’re willing to watch a competition that may not even have a winner and most of the time doesn’t. (Strictly speaking, I think you could call the course itself the winner most of the time.)
But there’s another good lesson on Ninja Warrior, and that’s respect for your opponent. It’s really cool to see the way all the contestants pull for each other. Granted, they’re not really competing against each other, but it’s still awesome to watch how disappointed the All-Stars are when one of their ilk fails early. Even cooler was when all the All-Stars were eliminated (Nagano fell on the first obstacle of Stage Two) and only American free-runner Levi Meeuwenberg was left standing. They did their best to coach him through Stage Three (this time with English subtitles):
Am I off base (Shocking, eh? Baseball term!) about competition? I love the fact that the Boy’s Fall Ball team didn’t win any games last year. It’ll make a winning experience all the more awesome. Plus, it pulls a layer back so the experiences of individual games are the best parts. Okay, so we didn’t win a game, but I made a great play at first base. Or I scored two goals in a losing hockey game.
I could see how a kid could get spoiled by always being on a winning team, but how often does that really happen? When I think back to my Little League days, I only remember being on one pretty good team (hmm…and I was the common element on all those lousy teams). But that one winning year stands out as a highlight for me.
Thoughts? I know this wasn’t a normal Monday post, but I haven’t written a lengthy non-theology post in some time.
MM: Aliens, Fall Ball, World Series
There are several Ultimate Guy Movies that I absolutely love. And James Cameron managed to direct two of them: The Terminator and Aliens.
Now, I recognize that most movie critics find Alien to be a superior film to its more booty-kicking sequel, but in terms of good old fashioned blowing-stuff-up, Aliens wins in a walk.
Besides, Ripley is one of the all-time great Guy Movie Heroes.
But there’s something that’s been bugging me for some time, and I’m hoping that someone familiar with the film will help me understand how this isn’t a plot hole.
Who was piloting that big gun-shaped ship the Marines and Ripley arrived on? Because it seems like they could’ve helped out the planetside folks. Or are we really to believe that big ship was just sitting up in orbit, on autopilot, waiting for the Marines to come back and fly it home? (Seems like it’d have been piloted by some Navy folks.)
Or were the folks on the ship the ones expected to rescue everybody after they’d been overdue for seventeen days?
I realize a good percentage of Internetters won’t have a clue what I’m referring to, but I’m hoping somebody can help.
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Well, Fall Ball is finally over. Which means we get a good six hours per week, at least, added back to our Time Available For Doing Other Stuff. With AWANA, Baseball, and Swim Team, our schedule has been packed lately.
The last game was muddy, and it was a defeat. But our guys got a lot better over the course of the season, and Ethan definitely enjoyed it and honed his defensive skills quite a bit. He pitched again in this game and struck out at least one batter. He also threw somebody out at first.
So now we’ve just got to practice, practice, practice and get ready for Spring Baseball. Wooo!
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So, the World Series will be the Phillies and the Yankees, just as Ethan predicted. I’m hoping for a long series, and though I’m pulling for the Phils at least a little bit, I don’t really care who wins. I can root for the players of any team, even if I don’t particularly like the team. How can you not like Mariano Rivera?
I could see these games having football scores, given the potency of both offenses. If there’s going to be a major pitchers’ duel, Game 1 is a good bet, with the two former Cleveland pitchers (Cliff Lee and C.C. Sabathia) as the starters. Other than that, I’m expecting an absolute slugfest.
MM: Flash Forward, Ethan’s Picks, Indian in the Cupboard
I’ve been watching ABC’s Flash Forward mostly because I read the book, Flashforward, back in April, which book I read because I heard about the series. So sometimes my book reading and movie/tv viewing becomes a recursive loop. Chicken and egg and all that.
The series made some substantial changes from the book, most of which actually make sense. For instance, in the book the Flash was more than twenty years in the future. So the rest of the book was people wrestling with what would happen a long time from now. Hard to accomplish in a series, that. So they went with six months. And it totally works, especially in the case of Dmitri Noh, who had no Flash, and therefore concludes that he’ll be dead in six months (which is complicated by his upcoming nuptials).
The other good move the series made was to shift focus from the scientists who caused the Flash in the book to the people trying to figure out what caused it in the series, and I figure the cause will be different in the series. In the book there’s really no mystery about who caused it, even if the cause isn’t fully understood. Keeping it a mystery makes sense in the series.
But enough about that. Watch it if you want. But this past week, I noticed what might be a subtle (well, actually blatant) reference to Dean Koontz’s sci-fi-time-travel-love-story Lightning. Agent Benford (portrayed by Joseph Fiennes) travels to Munich to meet a former Nazi who claims to have information about the blackouts.
When Benford arrives at the prison where the Nazi is being held, it’s quite stormy, with lightning featured rather heavily. And his liaison? One Stefan Krieger.
For those who haven’t read Lightning, first of all you should. Second, Stefan Krieger is one of the main characters in the book, and he happens to be a German SS Officer.
I seriously doubt it’s a coincidence.
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Last week, I asked Ethan who he thought would win the MLB Playoffs. Yes, a couple of the series are over, but I promise these are Ethan’s Picks:
Division Series Picks:
Yankees-Twins: Yankees (Bingo! Three-game sweep. Sorry, Tyler)
Angels-Red Sox: Red Sox (Could not have been more wrong here. Three-game sweep the other way. Still not sure how that happened.)
Phillies-Rockies: Phillies (Phils are up 2-1, so this is looking good)
Dodgers-Cardinals: Dodgers (Again, bingo on the three-gamer)
And his League Championship Picks:
Yankees-Red Sox: Yankees
Phillies-Dodgers: Phillies
Which leaves us with the World Series between the Yankees and the Phillies. Ethan has the Phillies winning it.
So sub in the Angels for the Red Sox and we’ll stick with Ethan’s picks and see how it comes out.
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Since Ethan so enjoyed The Indian in the Cupboard that we decided to check the 1995 movie adaptation out from the library. It was fairly well done, but in case you wanted to know, it had a lot more questionable content than the book. We don’t recommend it.
Language was definitely coarsened (nothing that you mightn’t hear on TV, but that’s hardly good news), and somehow a Motley Crue video was featured. Really? And the little bit of a Western the boys watch (following the disgusting Motley video) is a bit rougher than I’d pictured. Yes, it makes a good talking point, but it was a bit much.
So in case I’ve been less than clear, read the book. Forget the movie.
MM: Camping, Fall Ball, Football
Last week, we went camping with a bunch of other homeschoolers at Fort Stevens. It’s really quite lovely to go on vacation right when everybody else goes back to school, and we even got pretty good weather. (Much better than the rain the weekend campers evidently got.)
We got to use our new tent (used twice for backyard camping, but now officially broken in), new camp stove (Ramen, Grilled Cheese and Canned Soup – Lentil, and Pancakes were cooked thereon), and all that other New Stuff we got specifically for this trip.
And now it’s all inventoried and packed away in the garage for our next trip, which we feel will involve less equipment acquisition. We have the stuff, and it’s ready to get thrown in the back of the van.
Ethan had an absolute blast playing with his friends and sleeping in the tent (we even got upgraded to one of the Yurt sites for one night!).
Of course, camping at Fort Stevens isn’t exactly roughing it, as there’s plenty of drinkable (if less-than-tasty) water and bathrooms and showers. But it still counts as camping, and I didn’t shave or anything, so that makes it more realerer, right?
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After Ethan finished his Coach Pitch Baseball experience, we discovered the existence of Reedville Fall Baseball, also known as Fall Ball. The conversation with Ethan went something like this: 
Us: "Ethan, we might be able to get you into Fall Baseball. Would you rather do soccer again or…"
Ethan: “Baseball!”
Well, he had his first Fall Ball game on Sunday, and he was the starting pitcher. We figured he might be nervous, but he absolutely ate it up. The first inning wasn’t so great, as our team didn’t record an out before the bad guys scored their maximum per-inning total of five runs.
But Ethan put the ball over the plate quite a bit and even induced a ground ball that might’ve been turned into an out.
The second inning was another story, though. He allowed another ground ball to second. Alas, it didn’t turn into an out, and the runner eventually came around to score on a passed ball (pretty much all baserunners steal second, third, and home).
But Ethan’s line for the inning was this, in baseballese: 1 IP, 0H, R, 2K
Now allow me to translate: one inning pitched, no hits (the one groundball would go as an error rather than a hit), one run, two strikeouts. (I won’t reproduce the line for the first inning because it wasn’t as pretty.)
But the best part was how the inning ended. With two out and nobody on, the batter swung at the first pitch and hit a popup between home and first. And Ethan snagged it for the third out, then ran back to the dugout. Here’s the video of his performance:
The Reds (Ethan’s team) did end up on the losing side (either 8-4 or 8-5), but that one inning was awesome. And our team only allowed the five-run-max one time.
The hitting didn’t go exactly according to plan, Ethan ending up with a walk and a strikeout (but it was swinging, which is better than looking). But we’ll work on that.
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I’ve written before of my general dislike of football. Nonetheless, I’ve consented to participate in a Fantasy Football League with some family members. I have not consented to really get into it. In fact, I’m still not sure how the whole thing works, and I didn’t watch any substantive amount of football over the weekend.
I watched tennis and baseball instead. I feel no remorse over this.
But I must rant a bit about football and how greedy it is: It can’t even finish on time. And it’s a game with a CLOCK!!! At least baseball has that excuse. No clock, no real way to predict how long a game will take. Football games have ONE HOUR of clock time to run down, and they still manage to overrun their three hour television slot. With regularity.
This isn’t limited to professional football, of course, and my rant is actually somewhat more targeted at College Football (which is an even bigger mystery to me than the NFL), which impacted my baseball viewing. This is unacceptable.
The NFL did run over and impact my tennis viewing. This is a problem that needs fixin’. But at least I know football will be done by early next year. That’s something. So here it is, the first week of football, and I’m ready for it to be over.
Though I’ll admit I was still glad the Seahawks won.
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