Sorry, Ron, but your reputation does precede you

Poor Ron Artest, still misunderstood.

Houston center Yao Ming, informed Artest had been traded to his Rockets from the Sacramento Kings, referenced Artest’s best-known faux pas — the year’s suspension he received after inciting a small riot in Detroit during a 2004 game.

"Hopefully, he's not fighting anymore and going after a guy in the stands," Yao said.

Artest replied by saying it was a pity Yao had bought into "all the propaganda" about him.

Later, Artest said Yao’s comments had brought him down “because I'm so far beyond (the brawl).”

Yes, he’s moved far beyond that — to animal cruelty and domestic violence, in separate incidents that occurred last year.

And Jack Benny is still 39

According to a Jeré Longman and Juliet Macur story in The New York Times, two budding gymnasts on the host Olympic team might be underage — not that it can be proven when the country providing the passports for the athletes has a government as totalitarian as the People's Republic of China.

Younger gymnasts — He Kexin and Jiang Yuyuan are both suspected of being 14 — are said to have an advantage in lightness, flexibility and, possibly, fearlessness.

Bela Karolyi, the coach of the U.S. team, notes that age is an easy thing to alter in an authoritarian country, he said, because the government has such strict control of official paperwork.

Karolyi, the story continues, remembered one North Korean gymnast — Kim Gwang Suk — who in the 1991 world championships stood 4-foot-4, weighed 62 pounds, still had what appeared to be baby teeth, and claimed to be 16.

At one point, the North Korean Gymnastics Federation listed her at 15 for three straight years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/sports/olympics/27gymnasts.html?ref=olympics&pagewanted=print

Your parietal lobe: Don't leave home without it

Regardless of how nice you are, how centered, how peaceful (ah-ommmmmm ….. ah-ommmmmm …), you’ve occasionally been menaced by another member of the human race driving in a scary fashion and noticed this humanoid is in the midst of telephonic communication.

And you’ve thought quietly, gently to yourself — or possibly even murmured in a barely audible fashion:

HEY, BRAIN-DEAD!!!!

Well, it turns out, in a sense, you were right.

An article at Salon.com quotes a professor of psychology at the University of Utah who found that driving while talking on a cellphone is as dangerous as driving drunk, and — guess what? — using a headset is no help.

"The impairments aren't because your hands aren't on the wheel,” says David Strayer. “It's because your mind isn't (on) the road."

The article by Katharine Mieszkowski continues:

“Now neuroscience is showing your mind literally isn't on the road. The overtaxed driver's poor brain doesn't distinguish between a conversation that takes place on an iPhone or a Bluetooth headset. In both cases, the chatting driver is distracted, putting herself, her passengers, other drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians at risk.”

In other words, parts of your brain (the parietal lobe, the visual cortex) that should be paying attention to the fact you’re piloting 3,500 pounds of steel at the speed of a cheetah are not available to the process and, well, might as well be expired — as you, your passengers and people around you might soon be IF YOU DON’T GET OFF THAT PHONE!!!

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/25/cell_phone_driving/

It MUST be collusion

The major league players union is considering filing a grievance on behalf of Barry Bonds, still unemployed despite 28 home runs last year for San Francisco. The union can’t believe all 30 clubs would independently agree not to hire baseball’s biggest embarrassment since Pete Rose.

While granting Bonds’ still-impressive power, let’s see what other attributes he would bring to a contender:

A liability in the field? Check.

A prickly personality? Check.

A reputation as a clubhouse cancer? Check.

An indictment on perjury charges? Check.

Gee, why wouldn’t anybody want this guy?

http://www.latimes.com/sports/baseball/mlb/la-spw-bonds25-2008jul25,0,5143016.story

And take care of the poor in his gated community

A story on the Yankees at least discussing the possibility of signing Barry Bonds noted that Bonds' agent had said the slugger was willing to play for a prorated share of the big league's $390,000 minimum salary "and donate his salary to buy tickets for kids."

For a chance to pad his home run totals, Bonds is also willing to dress in public as Mother Theresa ...

But sometimes they have a point

The cry of being “disrespected” by athletes making more money in a few months than most of us will in a lifetime gets real old real fast. On the other hand, it’s amazing how some teams can treat a player who just days ago was part of its “family.”

Take Marcus Camby.

Camby, a 34-year-old veteran, was about the only Denver Nugget who actually worked when his team didn’t have the ball. For reasons having largely to do with salary, the defensive specialist was suddenly traded to the L.A. Clippers — essentially for a ham sandwich.

Though it miffed Camby, that’s OK; they can trade whom they want for whatever they want. What’s not OK is the Nuggets not having the common decency to tell Camby themselves.

"Nobody called, nobody said anything," Camby said when he was introduced as a Cliipper. "The day before I was told, I was with plenty of team people who could have given me a heads-up. I found out when my agent called me."

And at that press conference, Camby said he still hadn’t heard from anyone from the Nuggets’ front office or coaching staff.

Which is not only classless but stupid. Why piss off a pretty good player you’re going to have to face several times a season? I don't get it.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/basketball/nba/clippers/la-sp-dwyre22-2008jul22,0,1145333.column

Day One

Welcome to the The Anti-Fan blog.

I’ve been fiddling with it for a while and you may have chanced upon it the last week or so, but Friday, July 25, is officially Day One.

I’ve been writing The Anti-Fan column for The New Mexican in Santa Fe since late-1999, and what I wrote about my approach in my first column is as true now as it was then. Besides my blog postings — which will be put up nearly every day — I’ll post my weekly columns each Friday, and eventually an archive of my columns will be available on-site, but for now, let me quote from my first column as a form of introduction.

Whoops. Before I do that, please note, the next blog item is today's New Mexican column. The blog proper begins with the third item ("You can be ...). Also note that comments (and criticisms, yes) are welcome; profanity and rants are not. I hope you enjoy the blog. OK, here's the first column:

(Column begins)

My first fan moment?

New Year's Day 1961, sitting in front of a black-and-white TV, watching someone named Larry Zeno run, so help me God, a single-wing offense for UCLA in the Rose Bowl game against Minnesota.

The Bruins lost, but that didn't matter I liked their uniforms. A fan was born.

I was 9 years old.

My next fan memory was 1962, on the playground listening to my transistor radio as the Los Angeles Dodgers folded in the ninth inning of the deciding playoff game against the San Francisco Giants. That was painful, but with the Dodgers there were better moments to come, such as 1963 when Sandy Koufax and company swept the Yankees in the World Series.

But I not only rooted for the Dodgers, I rooted for the Angels (painful), I rooted for the Lakers (mainly painful), I rooted for the Rams (always painful), I rooted for the Kings (excruciating). I rooted and watched and listened.

For a fan in L.A., sometimes things got better (Bill Russell retired; a decade later Magic Johnson was drafted), sometimes things got worse (Sandy Koufax retired; Georgia Frontieri took over the Rams). But a fan I stayed.

Then I moved to Santa Fe.

Living in a city so far from the bigs can help one's perspective. So can growing older. The other day I watched a young New Mexican photographer living and dying with every pitch of a Yankees game, and I thought, "Was I ever like that?''

But it's not only distance, in miles and years, that have changed my attitude toward sports. It's the times, and no, they're not a changin' they're changed. There have always been greedheads and egomaniacs in sports, but now there's more, it seems, and with the amount of sports coverage on TV, they're harder than ever to ignore. Thanks to the communication revolution, the boors and babies and me-firsters come into our houses and into our faces until I want to say, a la Rhett Butler, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

I'm no longer a fan. Call me The Anti-Fan.

But tuning out sports altogether is difficult. For one thing, I often edit sports stories and design the sports pages at The New Mexican, and it helps to have an idea what's going on. For another, it still can be riveting to watch what happens between the lines.

That's where you see character displayed, both good and bad. And if I root for anything these days, it's people with character. And that's what I'll do here, as well as its opposite. You won't find any paeans to Lawrence Phillips here, or excuses why general manager X just had to give bad guy Y a second, third or ninth chance because, shoot, it's the American way, and to err is human and, oh yeah, our guys just have to plug that hole at wide receiver.

Noting hypocrisy in either politics or sports doesn't take a sharp mind; a barely sentient one will do. I qualify.

(Column ends)