Posts: 104

1. Past Time, Too Soon?

   03.Jul.08, 14:09 EDT
   
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   It might not be obvious, based on my ongoing critique, but I'm actually kinda into American life.
   

   Don’t think me a player hater for revisiting this. Listen: baseball’s awesome. I can remember chilling with Prince Fielder, Johnny Damon, and rising Milwaukee Brewers star

   Seth McClung in South Beach on Super Bowl Weekend ’07 and thinking: These cats are living the life. They’re among the world’s best at the game most men would die to play for a living.
   
   But would every kid want to play it? Today’s kids? Ya gotta wonder if tomorrow’s youngsters will be into baseball at a level that matches 20th century interest. Never mind that baseball plays out as challengingly deliberate for anyone under 20, the sport has become perversely expensive.
   
   My last Dodger game played out as the same amazing live event I’ve dug almost all of my life. Cliff Lee was the same beastly hurler he’s been all season. Closer Takashi Saito displayed the unpredictability that’s given Joe Torre headaches all season. It’s a nutty, up-and-down game, and the fans still feel it.
   
   But the expense of going to the ballpark has become damn-near prohibitive. My crew’s four seats were worth $160. Parking another $15. Unremarkable food ran $60 and my single large, domestic beer ran $11.50. A bottle of water was $5.75. A week later, I saw Gilberto Gil and Devendra Banhart at the Hollywood Bowl. It unnerved me that beer was relatively cheap at $7.50 and water $3.
   
   Now, MLB apologists will at this point say that  the Hollywood Bowl gets help in keeping its prices down. But owners get corporate welfare and that all-important anti-trust exemption is nothing like a burden, either. Still, baseball’s overlords can’t figure a way to get a family of four in and out of their entertainment product for under two-and-a-half bills? Are you shitting me?
   
   Pardon me if I think of baseball as an enterprise that targets elites. As Reagan McMahon pointed out in her innovative book Revolution in the Bleachers, the cost of all-important camps and club teams has risen so that the best American can’t even consider the game a realistic option.
   
   Anyone who watched the College Baseball World Series saw how the the diamond's throwback exclusive ways are playing out. Anyone who’s watched how the Dodgers’ “bargain” plan, its $35 all-you-can-eat bleachers ticket, knows that it amounts to a bunch of poor Mexicans penned up just beyond the outfield. On this fourth of July weekend, while MLB prepares for Mark McGuire’s dodgy return to the game, maybe you should consider just how far the national pastime has gotten from its origins in the hardscrabble fields of an America the game hardly seems to recognize anymore.
   

2. 

   Buggin' Out

   30.Jun.08, 12:36 EDT
   
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   It was just hours before the strangest Dodgers game I’m likely to watch — and a day before as typically impotent an offensive display as that team is likely to put on). It was not even 24 hours before the world celebrated with Spain that found my final fury with Pau Gasol.
   
   Finally, it was happening: In moments I'd deliver on my promise to ingest an insect.
   
   I fortified myself by saying, “Self, at least your helping to save the planet. It was that self-satisfied illusion, plus an opportunity to provide my seeds a lesson on the
   importance of keeping one’s word is. (The ceremonial bug eating also worked as a lesson in why one shouldn’t make rash promises, but let’s focus on one thing at a time.)
   
   I’d really had a ladybug in mind, or nothing with separate thorax and head, at least. But while Wyatt and Forest and I foraged through the front yard for an appetizer and my girl grilled the main course on the grill in back, the option for a simple critter went out the window. No ladybugs were found in the grass. And when I found a roly-poly Wyatt objected, going to the brink of tears with his objections. “But they’re so cute, Dad! Don’t!" So that species was out.
   
   (Wyatt’s a great kid, but, C’mon! What’s with the immaturity? He should be eating bugs at a third-grade level by now…)
   
   “What about a bee?” asked Forrest, who was standing near a yellow curb-side flower.
   
   And I was like, Yeah! ‘Cuz I damn sure wasn’t gobblin’ no fuckin’ cricket.
   
   Last week, after a spectacular meal at Gonpachi, I asked Katsuo Nagasawa fo advice on eating an insect, just because online I'd some images of food with something like larvae atop it. Raw like sushi. So it seemed good to ask. He just sat there mute though. This guy had seemed to me a little like a genius, so if he ain’t have no answers? Well, following through just got a notch harder. In need of a motivation,
   I went with the one that had worked so well in the past: Revenge.
   
   A bee stung me in the foot last month. So I stepped on its cousin, scraped
   him — gotta be a guy; I’d never kill a girl — off my flip-flop and carried
   him to the kitchen.
   
   “Oh my god, this is so exciting! It’s better than Disneyland!” squawked
   Wyatt. Christ. When is this kid gonna grow up? asked the man who was about
   to eat a bug, for the entertainment of his children.

   (Don't you envy the teams that don't even get past the first round of a post-season? Those folks don't expose themselves to the desperation and disappointment that's the natural fallout of failed title contention. Ask the folks in Germany. The difference between a celebratory parade and an unofficial national day of morning is the difference between lighting and, um, a lightning bug.)

   I had been asking myself whether it would be best to wrap my “food” in
   cheese or douse it with with maple syrup, washing dirt down the drain all
   of the while, when I noticed a stream of guts streaming out of the bug’s
   butt. OMG, I am just too squeamish. This was not gonna happen.
   
   Oh yes it was. Wyatt had just been led off to the bathroom to wash his
   filthy hands when surge came over me like, “Aiight, fuck it.” And I ripped
   a strip of American cheese from an individually-wrapped slice and rolled
   it ‘round the bee so that it looked like a mini-taquito. The just chomped
   down. Forrest jumped up and down, Wyatt moped like Disneyland had burned to the ground, and I simply survived.
   
   I'm here to tell ya: that shit was mad nasty yo. Like American cheese with a big bug in the middle of it, actually. As Wendy Case accurately predicted, the whole transaction was a bit like crunch, crunch squish. Not the end of the world, but not at all pleasant, either. There it is. I like the Lakers to contend for the title next June. But don’t look for a promise or anything like one.

3. 

   Beneath the Underdog

   26.Jun.08, 14:11 EDT
   
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   This week's new ESPN slow summer buzz-phrase, right on the heels of “Tell me how my ass taste,” turned to “Fresno State is the Turkey of the College World Series.” And deep in the second half of Wednesday's Euro Cup semi-final match I hoped not. The college that unleashed me and the birthplace of my fiancée, seemed tethered. Even though Turkey had not surrendered the goal that would take it out of the running for Euro Cup Title contention I sensed the worst was coming. Germany’s aggressive offense and the Turks’ shortage of players due to injury and suspension gave every reason to believe that.
   
   With the final game of the Fresno State-Georgia College World Series Final only hours away, my future and past felt inextricably connected. “Respiration” played over an eclectic mix tape while Germans on TV celebrated in a circumspect fashion.
   
   I know from both literature and personal experience that the Turkish are something like comfortable with melancholy, so I didn’t trip a bunch off the loss. I felt grateful, actually. The Cup has finally made me something like comfortable with international football. As a child I played a little, and I had a wormhole experience with the game in college, working as a sports correspondent for the Fresno Bee: A girls playoff game, in Bakersfield, ran late. This was in, like, the winter of 1988, before cell phones and laptops and all that good shit. The game ran late, I phoned my editor from a Carl’s Jr. along Highway 99. “You got 20 minutes!” said Jerry, my editor, and I scribbled out a story in my Reporter’s Notebook before dictating it back to the sports desk. The resulting narrative ended up being one of my better clips from the school years. That was great, but it's not the same as having a visceral connection to the sport. Now I got that. Gimme Germany to take the whole thing.

   Thank you, Turkey for delivering the good hurt.
   My Fresno experience was, overall, something liberation through pain. And if you were going to buy into this great moment in amateur athletics, you were gonna have to accept that part of it sucked. The ping of aluminum bats in college baseball can be hella unnerving, at first. The its pitching is so erratic that no game is ever over until the last out is rung up. (Take it easy and you can roll with that; it can work.) And if you’re like me, being champion of a conference that’s called the WAC is a mixed blessing.
   
   It’s fitting then that the Bulldogs’ unlikely run was came from such a flawed place. Fresno, invited to the tourney like the wallflower you invite to a party only because he has a great punch bowl, turned out the show as if that punch bowl wallflower rocked the mic and mthen ade all the ladies orgasm. Total leftfield hit.
   
   Like Turkey, Fresno State had been wracked by injury. But on the 10th anniversary of the school’s only other national championship, in women’s softball, its baseball team perservered. And I loved it. These Bulldogs are so white as to serve as tangible evidence that MLB has done little to foment interest in the game among people of color. But so what, for now. I know Terry Pendleton was amped.
   
   Truth is, I always regretted going to Fresno State, chalked up my attendance there to self-esteem so poor that I wouldn’t give UC Berkeley a chance. But on Wednesday, listening to all those crappy little towns like Clovis and Visalia, burgs I spent way too much time tooling around in search of sex and fast food, I felt great for my old school. In Fresno State’s fervent search for recognition in athletics, it had found mostly off-the-charts shame, especially in the well-funded basketball department. That one of the money-losing sports finally brought the university glory was fitting. So, When Clayton Allison got the last Georgia hitter to line out to right, I was as proud as if my old school and I were a tight and friendly fit. Proud as if I had actually graduated.
   
   Steve Detwiler, Fatih Terim — hats off to you. Thanks for the awesome memories on a slow summer day. Here's hoping Turkey gets into the EU and Fresno escapes the clutches of the anti-immigrant, God-obsessed, guided-by-talk radio right.

4. More Than a Game

   23.Jun.08, 13:02 EDT
   
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   I love baseball like I love George Carlin. But only at the start of the weekend,  when I found myself in Row A down the Dodger Stadium left-field line Dodger Stadium  shouting, “Cleveland rocks!” at the top of my lungs did I feel as though I’m sometimes too hard on the game.
   
   Extra innings were over. My beloved Cleveland Indians had beaten my almost as beloved Senior Circuit franchise 6-4. I’d gone crazy with the screamin’ and the hollerin' and whatnot, all but physically sparring with my boys — who live and die with Ye Olde Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers. And when the Tribe of my youth beat L.A. in its first-ever trip to Chavez Ravine I let out something — but only something — like a war cry. It felt awesome, like clowning Giants’ fans did last year when my Dodgers swept them in SF.
   
   That’s why I felt a little sad about what was said early that day. I’d mocked Major League Baseball a bit because of its creeping irrelevance among young Americans. It's sort of offensive to me the sports administrators and marketers are content to narrow its audience and feast off the disposable income of aging boomers. Isn't baseball supposed to be the national pastime?

   Here’s is where explanation is needed: It’s not like I haven’t been critical of MLB in the past. I got a lotta beef with Bud Selig and he crew. (Really. You are not even knowing.) But the spirit of my Friday morning public radio comments did not sit well with me on the sojourn out of Dodger Stadium.

   Now, I wasn’t regretting the floating of a notion about the game developing a 24-second clock; no, that shit was mad funny.
   
   My contextualization just could have been better. No doubt, demographic studies show MLB to be on a steady wane of popularity among kids. And the World Series ratings are low outside of major East Coast cities and participating teams’ markets. But MLB actually has a much greater viewership than traditional Neilsen ratings suggest. Its hardcore fan base — mature earners — follows its teams on cable and, increasingly, online. Measuring the game’s popularity from Game of the Week ratings went out with Joe Garagiola.
   
   Most importantly, there’s the baseball itself. Awesome in its leisurely spectacle. (Dodgers fans, who now leave early, as though Eric Gagne never happened, are surprisingly idiotic.  Remember when they had that cartoonish Padres comeback that ended with Nomar’s game-winner? If I wanna be critical of the Dodgers, please let me. I’m a fan, and sometimes what you need to hear isn’t what you want to hear.)
   
   Friday’s game didn’t even really start until the 7th inning, when a good third of the stadium was on its way to I-5. I know inter-league play leaves Dodgers fans at an information disadvantage, but aren’t they aware that any game in which Cleveland closer Joe Borowski is likely to pitch is a game the opponent can win? That’s when things got fun, in those putative closing innings. Baseball’s amazing in the sense that time can’t bail you out. (See, that thing about a 24-second clock really was a joke.) You’ve got to finish. Finish strong. Just like my beloved Fresno State baseball team.

   Just like me. With this blog I am done.

5. 

   Bike Blog

   19.Jun.08, 09:06 EDT
   
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   For now, forget the bug. I’ll be dealing with that in the next week or so. Stay tuned.
   
   Let’s talk about  the bike, my speedy slightly used cycle machine.  ‘Cuz now that L.A.’s baskeball playoff run is done, I can stop eating badly and drinking heedlessly three nights a week and, finally, get my exercise on.
   
   Last weekend I got some great Father’s Day gifts. (Dodgers tix from my sons? Against no less than beloved Cleveland Indians? Barack Obama mos def wasn’t talking about my black ass!) The one bound to give the most tangible benefit is the used bicycle my girl picked up from an Altadena retiree who specializes in fixing up broke-down bikes. If rising gas prices, weren’t an issue, I’d still dig the gift. But they are, so my love for the thing is practically familial. This week I’ve ridden everywhere that's bike-able. Maybe you should co the same.
   
   My treks in and around Culver City have supplemented a re-thought workout plan. Now it's clear that I’ve put too much time and effort into weight training. About a half-hour of each thrice-weekly workout session was devoted to lifting. Ninety minutes is just too much for a busy guy who’s trying to lose 10 pounds. Now I do 60 minutes a week, and the lifting is intense and heavy.
   
   I first figured out the approach about seven days ago, when I whimsically throw 225 on the bench press. Not only could I lift it, but I could get it up repeatedly. Ordinarily I had been working with as much as 70 pounds less, thinking less weight and more reps was a good way to burn calories. But fewer and smaller barbells weren’t making me lose weight, no matter how frequently I pushed them up in the air. All I burned were minutes; cardio is my thing.
   
   Even after dropping down to a more reasonable working bench press of 190 pounds, I’ve cut a third of my time in the weight room.  The sessions on that rowing machine, etc. are equally compact and dense. On the way to my gym, I meander through the neighborhood and town that surrounds it. (Ballona Creek isn’t much to look at, but the environs around that water body are at least quiet and without car traffic.)
   
   And perhaps more importantly — well, at least as important what I put into my body — is the incidental riding that has infiltrated my week. The grocery store is a regular destination. Plans are to ride my bike to the Red Line train stop in Koreatown, then have mass transit get my ass to Pasadena for time with my kids. And of course there’s that dispensary up in Hollywood…
   
   Fact is, deadlines and utility drives us in these busy, busy times. As much as I can multi-task by burning calories while getting places — as opposed to burning them on a stationary machine — my life is better, more practical. And as for those gas prices? That’s one tax on my quality of life that I refuse to pay.
   
   Thank you, baby.

   
   

6. 

   Lakers Lose? I'll Eat a Bug

   16.Jun.08, 13:07 EDT
   
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   On Tuesday the Lakers put it all on the line. And I am not even specifically addressing the season that ends if Los Angeles loses to Boston at the Garden. No, the stakes I'm talking are even bigger: If the L.A. doesn’t get the upset win in Game Six, I’ll eat a bug.
   
   The Cal Worthington-esque vow came about Sunday in Venice, after watching Turkey’s thrilling comeback win over the Czech Republic in Euro football action. The fam was all gathered ‘round, and I just blurted it out. No one, excepting my older son, had been feeling my assurances that the Lakers weren’t finished in the wake of  Thursday’s historic meltdown. And I really needed to be heard.
   
   I will keep my word, but I really don’t see myself snacking on an insect tomorrow night. And, oddly enough, none of my confidence has to do with the prospect of game fixing. No. I simply believe the Lakers have outplayed the Celtics throughout the series. My take on L.A., based on watching about three-quarters of the team’s games this season, is that they are intellectual and finesse oriented, as opposed to tenacious and tough. The Lakers, the NBA's second-youngest team and most experts’ championship favorite for 2009, tend to watch a bit of basketball before dissecting their opponents. And that’s what had been happening in this series, before letting up on the gas upended my guys on Thursday night.
   
   In the process, Kobe’s teammates have done a lot of growing up. Pau Gasol, a paragon of European wimpiness throughout this series, showed his nuggets late in the second half of Sunday night's win. He began aggressively attacking the basket, punishing a foul-plagued and injury-depleted Boston front line. Up until that point, the much-heralded center had been a blemish on his home country Spain’s name. Chickenshit. Chickenshit. Chickenshit. (To be fair, as a member of the woeful Memphis Grizzlies Gasol had little idea what a meaningful game looked or felt like.)
   
   As on Thursday, Phil Jackson’s charges took a big first-half league, then lost it. Again much of the responsibility for the evaporation of points fell to Phil himself: He added in the mix infrequent performers Trevor Ariza and Chris Mihm, who fouled and missed shots and generally appeared confused. I think Jackson played these cats as preparation for the upcoming Boston contest(s). (Boston leads 3-2. No team has ever come back from a 3-1 deficit, which LA faced going in to Sunday's contest.  And no vistor has ever won the last two games of a Finals played in the 2-3-2 format.) Kendrick Perkins — who would return to the line-up for Game Seven — has intimidated Gasol and Ronny Turiaf. Mihm is the only player on L.A.’s bench with a skill set approximating the defensive-minded Perkins or even ancient mudder P.J. Brown. And Ariza is a stopper of the sort that’s in small supply in La-La Land.
   
   So, no, I am not looking up recipes for insects, either chocolate covered or sautéed. And I’m not trying to find out what bugs go down best. After all, I never said the crawler gets chomped on if the Lakers win the whole thing in Boston, which I feel in my gut they will. I only need Tuesday.

7. 

   Don't Bet on the NBA

   12.Jun.08, 13:52 EDT
   
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   For reasons unrelated to Buzz Bissinger-style  hateration, I can't easily read Simmons right now. Still I try, because he’s my favorite blogging guy. Simmons is on about the burning questions of the 2008 NBA Finals, but a lot of us are right now ruminating on the Western Conference Finals of 2002.
   
   I am a fan of the LA Lakers, but I’m the rarest kind: the one who also roots for the Sacramento Kings. (Yeah, yeah. Don’t pillory me; I know the deal. Literally, friendships in my life have disappeared because of my split affinity. But what can I say? The Kings moved from Kansas City to Sacramento the same week I moved from Sandusky, Ohio to Sactown. They had me at hellow. Yet, I do love me some Showtime, now. Rooting for the Cali teams while living in NYC will twist a man up real good.)
   
   In June of 2002, completely down with Webber, Divac, Bibby, Turgulu, Stoyokovic, etc, I sat in The Colorado of Pasadena, just certain my Kings were headed to the Finals. They were up big in the fourth quarter of the clinching game, then the NBA took the Conference Championship from my Kings. Shaq shot free throws like they were his birthright because the NBA wanted LA — not Sactown — in its match-up with New Jersey.
   
   I saw what I saw and no one can make me believe anything else happened. Apologist for the NBA such as Michael Wilbon saw it as a horribly officiated game. I say it was, like Porky’s or a Michael Bay film, expertly officiated in that the refs achieved everything they set out to do.
   
   My whole way of seeing sports has changed. The Patriots cheated — from the ground — floor I was in on that one. Steroids? Yeah they were an enormous scam. And even as an advocate of better living through chemistry I could not abide by their presence in baseball’s un-leveled playing field. But what to make of Dongaghy‘s allegations that the 2002 Sac v. L.A. series and others were fixed? There’s no denying that the former ref is in a desperate situation, facing a quarter century of incarceration for his misdeeds. How should one weigh his words’ downside with the Laker-centric vision that’s forever burned on my retina. Unless you live in Sacramento, it’s a tough call.
   
   Not trusting ESPN — which might stand for Entertainment leagues’ Spin — I
   took a look at FoxSports coverage: They've put out day one graphics that
   question the fax of that contest. Fuck Bill O'Reilly, but there's no spin
   here.
   
   I think he’s trying to bring the whole league down, and he might just do that. Fans like me, who can watch pro sports as theater and accept that a lot of the abiding frame work is manipulated by market forces, refs and whatever are the exception. Most folks want to believe. If they’re led to believe that the hoop they’re watching is being conducted — not contested — then the NBA may well be on the way to the NHL’s brand of marginality. Commissioner David Stern must act quickly, or his alleged one bad actor’s work will metastasize into a thespian disease that will bleed his league.
   
   Donnell Alexander is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Sports & Fitness. He posts Mondays and Thursdays.

8. When the Drinking Stops

   02.Jun.08, 11:34 EDT
   
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   If all that kept me from working out this week was the edit of my Ira Newble radion piece set to run on Boston's Only a Game, I'd have had a perfectly reasonable excuse — Soundtrack Pro can overwhelm a brotha at first. But I was also doing the whirlwind New York thing, and the closest thing to exercise was brisk walks from bar to restaurant to bar to home. (Coming out of Wenner Media, I did spot that David cat who won American Idol; absolute shrimp that guy.) I'd count the brilliant sex (not with David) but sometimes one must just lay back and enjoy the ride.
   
   So, by the time my flight landed at LAX on Wednesday night, my body resembled a brownie about 15 minutes before being fully cooked; soft and vulnerable. Disgusted, I forced myself out of bed and into the gym before sunrise with the aim of getting my shit together. The trick would be doing so in such a way that would not turn me off from hitting the gym again in the following days. Any schmuck can have one strong session; I want to re-establish a pattern of productive exercise.
   
   The brain plays as big a role in pulling this off as anything below the neck. Like, if I feel like I'm getting away with watching TV, I'll work the LifeFitness machine toward eternity. Toward this end, I made a point of exiting the locker room at exactly 5:30 a.m. SportsCenter stacks its broadcasts so that the top of the hour portions contain fewer commercials. Combine that with inherently more interesting stories that then appear on the channel's sports news loop and you have a recipe for boosting performance when your workout most needs it.
   
   I didn't even set a target time for my cardio. Rather, I told myself: 600 calories burned and yer done, Donnell. My performance level, 15, was moderate enough that when highlights from last night's Detroit-Boston basketball match-up ran, I was just winded enough to make things interesting. By the time Disney failed to sell me on Big Brown — about the only thing less interesting than animals forced to work out hard for humans' entertainment was one dominant animal forced to work out against lesser animals for humans' entertainment — I had made my numbers and was off to do some work on my big belly.
   
   My gut really isn't what it used to be. Thing is, as I've dropped tonnage over the past nine months or so, my midsection lagged proportionally. Sure, I could stop swilling beer. (At least I tell myself I could.) Sit-ups though are bound to disturb my friends' expectation for top-notch barroom shit-talking. I did 150, then moved on to my routine of upper-body work. This component of my regimen is down from the past as it's finally become clear that whatever weight-loss benefits lifting, curling, and benching might bring, I haven't mastered the proper technique. Now my only goal is a rippling back. Stay tuned.
   
   Two hours later, I'm out of the gym and feeling like I could do more. Tomorrow I'll do another easy session, concentrating again on aerobics and doing the arm and chest work that consistently gets me laid. On Saturday maybe I'll have the storied hoops contest that pits my girl and my sixth-grade boy against me and my first grader. (That little boy better play to win, man!) And if I'm smart I'll trade in the beer for wine. Simple as that, it will be like New York never happened.
   

9. Kobe Bryant, American Idol

   22.May.08, 12:30 EDT
   
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   Kobe Bryant, American Idol
   
   I’m old school. “Ghetto Fabulous” is my idea of a good music video. So, I’ve never actually sat down and watched an entire episode of American Idol.
   
   Oh, I’ve been to the show, American Idol Live back in 2003. I remember the
   show’s music director complaining good-naturedly that the whirlwind tour
   was “like Groundhog Day” in that his band had to play the same songs exactly the same way from town to town. Clay was cool, if sorta new-money into himself. And I stayed up all night on the bus ride from Seattle to Portland watching a Marvin Gaye concert DVD and playing John Madden with Ruben Studdard and Rickey Smith, telling the latter in one offhand moment of manning the controllers: “It incenses me that you are more famous than I am.”
   
   But was hard not to check in on David Cook And that Utah kid, if only because it was going on across the street from Staples Center, at the Nokia Center. I couldn’t help but think that the next real American idol was in the wrong building. The Kobester — aka Black Mamba, aka Triple Ocho — was ready for his close-up.
   
   Only the Lakers fans who are too close to the action, which is to say all of us, failed to see what Kobe was doing when he opted not to shoot and, instead, play the extreme facilitator role in the first two-and-a-half quarters. L.A. fell behind by as many as 20 points late in the third and a smattering of previously unthinkable
   boos sprinkled down on the Staples Center floor.
   
   And then Bryant did something utterly extraordinary, even for a man who once scored 81 points in a game. He put it in gear. He started the show. As simple as turning on a spotlight, the wing player shifted the proportion of the scoring load from his teammates to himself, taking about 70 percent of the burden. And if you’re really attuned to the team you could tell that the game was over before the Lakers even had the lead. Los Angeles couldn’t have had a better advantage if it had been allowed an extra man.
   
   And the plot thickens. Nevermind those amateurs across the street, the
   biggest emerging star in the nation wears no. 24 and dresses in purple and
   gold. On the brink of the Olympics in Beijing, that era of Kobe the hated is officially over. He’s the greatest, most compelling athlete we have right now. And he's about to dominate the stage.
   
   Welcome home.

10. Inter-Leage Play Rules!

    19.May.08, 12:53 EDT
    
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    Sports aficionados, particularly those in thrall with the NBA, hardly pay heed to May Major League Baseball. It’s just too early in the season for the stats and standings to mean a whole bunch. No one believes Chipper Jones will be hitting .400 in August. Or that Tampa Bay will remain in sniffing distance of first place beyond the All-Star break. Our general lethargy for the pastime formerly known as National holds even more true in a season depleted of homers and strikeouts by the big drug crackdown.
    
    Yet, watching the Cleveland Cavaliers struggle to break the 30-point mark late in the first half of its eventual loss to the Boston Celtics in Game Seven of the Eastern Conference Semis was enough to make me re-think my early season disdain. Believe it or not, there can actually be such a thing as too much basketball. (Tim Donaghy might disagree with you, but that dude’s got a problem.) Although, I gotta observe  that it's remarkable watching Ray Allen fade from existence right before our eyes, a la Marty McFly.

    Just a few dozen more hours before the Finals get started. Wheat y chaff separated, finally. All prelims aside. But still...

    My time is mad valuable. So, I grabbed my remote and switched to the regular season Freeway Series — intending to go in for just a hot minute of gander — just in time to watch Mike Napoli park a three-run homer in the left-field seats of Anaheim Stadium. Nothing pays off like a dinger in a rivalry game. Instantly I was against the grain and in the mood for a hit of baseball.

    Good thing, too. Sunday capped the pro game's first weekend with inter-league
    play. Three local rivalries in particular caught my eye. While not a lot of baseball’s components are crackling with compelling matter, inter-league play has turned out to be a, um, hit. Getting two local teams to face off is inherently interesting, even when the games aren’t close. A brutal beatdown foments hard-feelings and smack-talking and strengthens interest in the game.
    
    Take one of the other marquee match-ups, Cleveland versus Cincinnati, which had top hurlers Cliff Lee and Edison Volquez in opposition. Volquez not only handed Lee his first loss, he helped push two teams that formerly never played into the National spotlight. The last of the inter-league play’s first batch had in the Subway Series. The Mets hammered the Yankees so badly that it’s virtually guaranteed that Jason Giambi’s communal gold lame' thong will not catch on. Praise Jah.