My daughter’s middle school volleyball team just finished an undefeated season.
To top off going undefeated in their league, they also beat their hated Brooklyn rival, a larger school in a different league (with generally good teams).
Go Brooklyn Friends. Apparently Quakers can kick butt…
Anthony Ervin did it (read prior post for context). I watched it with my daughter, we were very excited. He looks pretty much the same as he did when he was teaching her swimming seven years ago. What a remarkable story.
In an obscure bit of life trivia, my oldest daughter briefly took swim lessons from Anthony Ervin. Anthony Ervin won the gold medal in the 50m freestyle in the 2000 Olympics.
Over the next decade, Ervin sold his gold medal, donated the money to charity, then took off on a spiritual quest. He dabbled in everything from Zen Buddhism to the hard-partying lifestyle of playing in rock bands. Instead of a pool, he sank into depression, which, at its deepest, led to a suicide attempt and a death-defying motorcycle accident. Nearing age 30, he desperately needed a shot at redemption.
“For me, getting the tattoos was a way of reclaiming my own skin, and regaining control of myself,” Ervin said.
Armed with elaborate new ink, he went back to school and started coaching at a swim camp for kids. Those kids helped him remember what he loved about swimming in the first place.
My daughter was 6 at the time, so as a teacher he was overkill, but he was nice and good with the kids.
I remember reading in 2012 that he was trying a comeback. He made the Olympic team but didn’t win a medal. I didn’t realize he’s back again in Rio. And he won a gold medal in the 4×100 freestyle relay. That’s a 16 year gap between gold medals. And he qualified for the final in the 50m freestyle.
He’ll be the old guy at 35. He’s certainly not favored, though he was tied for second in the semi-final heats. I’ll be rooting for him.
I was heading home from work and stopped off at a local bar/restaurant to get some pizza for dinner. I sat at the bar and knew the bartender. NBC had switched from the Olympics to local news so he was trying to find Olympics somewhere else. I suggested NBCSN which he found.
The rugby gold medal game. I’ve never really watched rugby. They were presumably playing the national anthems (the sound was off) and I clearly saw the UK flag and the other flag was one of those obvious ex-colonies because it had the UK flag in the corner. So I’m trying to guess, Australia? Scotland?
No, Fiji.
Fiji? Seriously? Tiny island nation? They have to be the Cinderella story so I’m clearly rooting for them. But as they pan across both teams, it’s clear that Team Fiji looks like LeBron James’ cousins. Not that tall, but totally built. And they just looked fast.
Looks were not deceiving, they were all fast, they were all powerhouses and they could all throw/catch the ball. I’ve never watched an actual rugby match before. It was a ton of fun to watch.
Fiji romped. They’d pass the ball side to side a few times, someone huge and fast would see a bit of an opening and charge through. One Brit would try to tackle him and fail. A second Brit would join him and at that point the Fiji dude would pass it to his now wide open teammate who would sprint for a touchdown.
Do they call it a touchdown? No clue. It’s actually worth 5 points and the “extra point” is worth 2. That’s as much of the rules as I figured out. It was still big fun. The non stop action of soccer but with the scoring of basketball.
This picture sums up the rout:
Or maybe this one:
Bigger faster dudes from Fiji leaving the Brits in the dust. It was huge fun to watch.
I’ve mentioned Governors Island before (four years ago, actually). It was once a Coast Guard installation and later the NYFD used the abandoned buildings for fire training. Bloomberg cleaned it up and turned it into a tourist destination.
I took Victoria over on the ferry last Sunday. Her usual favorites are mini golf:
and walking the goats:
This time, near the farm we saw drone racing. Turns out it was the national drone racing championships.
We didn’t stay long, there were goats to walk, but damn those things were fast. You will have to click to enlarge and then you’ll barely see one in the upper right:
Tony Hawk is almost as old as me. 17 years ago he was the first skateboarder ever to perform a 900 (two and a half full revolutions) in competition.
At 48 he decided to do it one more time.
In Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee series, the episode with Chris Rock, he says something like:
To learn to do a skateboard trick, how many times do you have to get something wrong first, until you get it right? And you hurt yourself and if you learn to do that trick, now you got a life lesson. Whenever I see those skateboard kids, I think, those kids will be all right.
Watch a 48 year old try to do the trick one more time:
Here’s him doing it the first time. Wasn’t easy then either…
I’m partial to 42 but I like this article, referencing the possible record breaking 73 wins for the Warriors tonight:
In an episode of “The Big Bang Theory,” the character Sheldon Lee Cooper says that this is one of several properties that make seventy-three “the best number.” As for the other properties: “It is the twenty-first prime number. Its mirror, thirty-seven, is the twelfth. And its mirror, twenty-one, is the product of multiplying—hang onto your hats—seven and three.” He goes on to add, “In binary, seventy-three is a palindrome: 1001001.”
42 is merely the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything…
If you don’t follow baseball, you might have missed the story where Matt Harvey, the Mets #1 pitcher, recently had a bit of a medical scare with a bladder infection causing a blood clot.
Harvey told the press that he regularly holds his pee too long and that was part of the problem. He is now upset because the NY sports press found that funny.
Honestly, what did he expect? The NY Daily News and the NY Post had a field day. This is exactly what tabloid cover pages are for.
The NY Post came up with so many jokes they showed alternate covers:
Amusingly, both the Daily News and the Post went with “Ya Gotta Relieve”, though I like the Post’s “Bladder up” line:
Sorry Matt. Yes, it was a serious health issue that grown ups should treat seriously. But this is NY, those are the tabloids, and there’s nothing grown up about the back page…
I moved to New York City in 1992. Yes, I’m old. Back then I was a musician. Or rather a struggling musician. To pay rent, I gave trumpet lessons in Westchester (affluent suburbs north of NYC for those unfamiliar).
Driving from 3-6 I discovered WFAN, the NYC sports radio station.
I’ve listened to sports radio in many cities. I’m a huge sports fan, but I find sports radio to be mostly buffoonery. WFAN was a bit different. Mike Francesa and Chris “Mad Dog” Russo hosted “Mike and the Mad Dog” during the crucial evening drive time in NYC. This was 1992, pre iPod, pre Sirius, radio was a very big deal. And then as well as today, lots of people are driving around NYC.
And for a sports fan, they were great. Not stupid sports stuff, interesting sports stuff. As the top NYC sports station, they had all the top interviews. Francesa was the more intellectual sports guy and Russo was the funnier one, but Mike was funny and Chris was smart also. If you liked sports and you were driving, this was what you listened to.
They started in 1989. They worked together for 19 years until 2008 dominating the drive time radio slot. In 2008 Chris Russo decided it was time to go off on his own with Sirius and the partnership was broken. That was big news at the time, but Francesa has done the show solo since then, still dominating NYC radio ratings. He is known as the “Sports Pope” on NYC.
This would seem like fringe news in most cities. Sports in New York are different than in other cities. You’ve heard of Comic-Con or other similar events? There’s an annual FrancesaCon. Not a joke, and no, I have not attended.
Recently, Mike and Chris agreed to do a reunion show. This was non trivial news. Madison Square Garden sponsored it to support their charity and it was hosted at Radio City Music Hall. Tickets sold out in minutes. Every major NY sports figure was a part of it. It raised over a million dollars for charity.
This must seem crazy in other cities. When they announced that that they were splitting up, people cried. Literally, on the air.
Francesa is still the top sports radio guy in the country, but Mike and The Mad Dog is the bar for all sports radio.
This is at Tiger Woods’ first golf course. Sure, it’s a very short par 3, but an 11 year old hits a hole in one right in front of Tiger Woods…
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