Linebacker, Lineback?
Half Backer, Half Back? Middle?
Silly Mid, on and off!
Odd thoughts on position names in sport.
Linebackers and Half Backs.
Not Line Backs and Half Backers.
Cricket wins hands down with the Silly Mid, both On and Off.
Not going near Tight Ender.
Michigan Football
I know, silly, stupid … but
Beating Notre Dame
Very odd when the trivia question question during the Michigan – Notre Dame game last night asked about the last time Notre Dame came to Ann Arbor as the number 1 ranked team in the nation.
It was 1981.
It was also my first game as a Michigan student in the Michigan student section.
Steve Smith hit Anthony Carter down the sidelines for a touchdown in the student section corner of the end zone.
I screamed so loud and so long that something in my head went SNAP and I had a headache for 3 days.
Michigan went on the win 27-9.
It’s always great to beat Notre Dame.
IT’S GREAT TO BE
A MICHIGAN WOLVERINE.
post game interviews
I listen and believe them,
though I know they lie
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!
Michigan Football Coach after win over Illinois on October 12, 2019.
A lot of guys played extremely well, a lot of guys toughed it up.
I trust and believe in our team, and we saw the evidence today. Very proud of that fact, and of our guys. I think there’s a callous that’s been built there and a toughness that has been born out of that, and that bodes well for our team.
So I thought those guys rose to the challenge today.
We’ll see how we came out of this game. We’ll find out when we find out.
Interview practice from the the movie, Bull Durham:
Crash: “You got something to write with? Good. It’s time to work on your interviews.”
Nuke: “My interviews? What do I got to do?”
Crash: “You’re gonna have to learn your cliches. You’re going to have to study them. You’re going to have to know them. They’re your friends. Write this down. We’ve got to play them one day at a time.”
Nuke: “Got to play … that’s pretty boring, you know?”
Crash: “Of course it’s boring. That’s the point. Write it down!”
Nuke: “One day at a time …”
Crash: “I’m just happy to be here. Hope I can help the ball club. I know. Write it down. I just want to give it my best shot, and the good Lord willing, things will work out.”
Nuke: “Good Lord willing …”
Crash: “Things will work out.”
Sonnet 138: When my love swears that she is made of truth
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
10 run 1st inning?
grand slam in the 10th? You choose …
zugzwang at the park!
Atlanta fans for once did not wake to the news that, once again, their team did not go down in flames. (Just what did Sherman start here?)
Because the Braves played at 4:30PM and it was all over by 5PM and Atlanta fans went to bed knowing what had happened to yet another pretty good baseball team.
Later that night, the Los Angeles Dodgers lost in the 10th inning on a grand slam home run.
10 runs in the first inning or a grand slam in the 10th.
Nice symmetry of the number 10 and it is October 10th today.
This was also the 10th consecutive playoff series loss for the Braves.
Recently I have been made aware of the chess term, zugzwang.
A situation in which the obligation to make a move in one’s turn is a serious, often decisive, disadvantage.
In other words, you have to make a move but all moves are bad and most likely make the situation worse.
So many times in life fit in with zugzwang.
Almost of all sports is.
Tony La Russa once said, “There isn’t much I can do to win a ball game but there are a lot of things I can do to lose a ballgame.”
Or as one writer put it (it may have been Roger Angell), “Go to a bullpen filled with convicted arsonists?”
Zugzwang.
So to the original question.
10 runs in the 1st?
4 runs in the 10th?
Both win or go home games.
Would you rather have it be over almost before it started?
Or snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?
Give up 10 runs in the 1st?
Are you kidding?
On five hits?
Is that even possible?
Who does that?
Who can do that?
Well, besides any Atlanta team.
My Dad often said he liked his team to get a big lead and steadily pull away.
Or a grand slam in the 10th after being up 3 to 1 earlier in the game.
That seems to have happened more often.
The 10 runs in the 1st was a new record.
A record one team wants no part of.
That’s what nightmares are made of.
A grand slam in the 10th.
That’s what dreams are made of.
Unexplainable?
Unexcuasable? Michigan?
Writers saw same team.
Michigan, as a football team, stunk up the joint yesterday.
Michigan, as a football team, stinks.
Michigan, until about 2PM Saturday afternoon was thought to be one of the best teams in the county.
A top ten team.
Michigan changed everyone’s minds with their game play at Wisconsin.
Their performace was unexplainable.
Their performance was unexcusavke.
They were pretenders.
They were a fraud.
Now wait just a minute.
The only reason most of us had any idea that Michigan was a top ten team was because the people who are paid to know such things told us such things.
Like Will Rodges, all I know is what I read in the papers.
What, where, who, how and why did the collective sports world think Michigan was so good?
And because the sportwriters thought so and wrote so and said so, it is Michigan’s fault that the team is not as good as the sportwriters thought?
How dumb and I to listen to sports writers?
At the end of the day, I am a Michigan Man, so called.
A winning football team would be better than a losing football, but I do not consider myself a Michigan Man because OF the football team.
While in no way comparable, I am reminded of the Iron Brigade in the Civil War.
The Iron Brigade was the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of the 1st Corps of the Army of the Potomac.
The wore distinctive black hats called a Hardee Hat which looked like a Lincoln stovepipe hat with a wide brim, pinned up on one side, aussie style.
This in the Army of the Potomac, the army of the Eastern United States, was made up of regiments from Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan.
It was recognized as one of the hard fighting units in the army and was famous throughout both the armies if the North and South.
At Gettysburg, when the Iron Brigade came into view, Confederate soldiers were heard to say, ‘It’s those Black Hat fellers again.’
It was at Gettysburg that the Iron Brigade was wrecked.
In the first day at Gettysburg, the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of the 1st Corps of the Army of the Potomac lost two thirds of its effective strength of 1800 men.
“And,” wrote Bruce Catton in Glory Road, his thee volume history of the Army of the Potomac, “for the rest of the war, it existed as a shadow, always a great name but never again a mighty force in battle.”
Like I wrote, the state of Michigan Football cannot in anyway be compared to the Iron Brigade.
But the simply poetry of the phrase, always a great name, appeals to me.
I hope I am wrong.
I hope the eggheads in the Athens of the West can collectively come up with a Coach who can prepare a team of athlete’s to compete on the big stage.
If not, win or lose, always a great name.
I can live with that.
