Scattered Thoughts on the Winter Olympics

I am pretty much an Olympics junkie. I definitely prefer the Summer Olympics to the Winter Games, but I have still tried to watch as much as possible over the last several days despite being pretty busy with other things.

A few scattered observations:

While there are some sports that I don’t care much about, and others that I don’t even think are remotely sport-like (I’m looking at you Ice Dancing), there are a few Winter Olympic events that I really enjoy:

• Curling is an easy sport to make fun of (“Ooh, the way he swept that ice was so impressive”), and if you randomly decided to take up a sport so that you could go to the Olympics, I think it might be your best bet, but I really like watching it. I think there is a good deal of strategy involved, and I’m probably somewhat impressed with it because it combines elements of three other sports/games that I like but am not good at: pool, horseshoes, and shuffleboard.

• I think short track speed skating is maybe the most intense event to watch because at any time any of the competitors can fall without even making a mistake (if someone else collides with them). I certainly don’t understand all of the rules (I still don’t know why J.R. Celski was disqualified the other night instead of the Canadian guy who was trying to spoon him), but I think it’s a lot of fun to watch and the drama of Apolo Ohno vs. the South Koreans just adds to the excitement.

• I really enjoy all of the snowboarding events as well. I’ve never been snowboarding before, but I know it’s not easy, and the way the athletes are able to maneuver around turns and over jumps or, alternatively, perform tricks in the halfpipe blows me away.

• • •

Speaking of snowboarding, Shaun White seems to dominate his sport about as much as Usain Bolt dominates his—basically, if either of these guys perform anywhere near their best, no one else seems to have much of a chance.

White already had the gold medal locked up in the halfpipe by a wide margin when he decided to try out a new trick—a “Double McTwist 1260”—in his final run. He landed it successfully (the first time it had ever been done in competition), scored a 48.4 (out of 50), and took home his second consecutive gold medal in the event.

In addition to his innovative tricks, the thing that sets White apart is how high he gets on his jumps. At one point NBC overlapped footage of White with another top rider to show how much higher Shaun gets and it wasn’t even close.

• • •

I know that the only ice involved in basketball is what comes in the cups at the concession stands, but it is technically a winter sport (at least in the U.S., but we invented it so we should know), and I think it would be a great addition for the Winter Games.

In the Summer Olympics, despite showcasing some of the greatest and most famous athletes in the world, basketball is pretty much an afterthought and takes a backseat to the other events like Track and Field and Swimming. If you moved it to the Winter Olympics, though, it would be huge, and would immediately become one of the premiere events.

I realize doing this would interrupt the NBA schedule, but it works with the NHL, so it seems like it could work with basketball too. Besides, who cares about the NBA until after March Madness is over anyway?

• • •

Was anyone else really happy when the U.S. beat Canada in hockey?

Canadians care about hockey more than any other sport, and within the context of hockey, care more about beating the United States than any other team. Americans, on the other hand, rarely think about hockey, and most of us didn’t even realize that the entire 2004-2005 NHL season was canceled because of labor disputes (no really, it was).

And still, we won.

I know I probably shouldn’t have experienced so much smugness from the victory, but I really couldn’t help myself.

Design and Layout Samples

I’ve enjoyed tinkering with page layout and graphic design for some time, but over the last year or so, it’s something that I’ve been doing more and more.

There’s a new link up in the NavBar which will take you to some design projects I’ve worked on. Mainly it’s stuff for work, like our new church website or posters to advertise youth group events.

I am a rank amateur when it comes to design stuff, but it’s something I enjoy, and I’m pretty pleased with some of the results. And if nothing else, it makes for nice posters that I can decorate our youth room with.

George Will On Why Aluminum Bats Are Evil

For quite a while now I’ve been plodding through George Will’s Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball.

It’s a well-known book in the baseball world, and it’s been recommended to me multiple times. I’ve been a little disappointed in it so far (hence the “plodding through” as mentioned above), but that’s mainly because several of the characters Will spends so much time focusing on aren’t so impressive 20 years later (Orel Hersheiser, Greg Swindell, Jim Gott, Jose Canseco, Tim Raines, Wade Boggs, Dwight Gooden), and also because I’ve already heard his best anecdotes from his interviews on Ken Burns’ Baseball.

Nevertheless, Will does make some good points, and perhaps none of them better than his description of the insidious evil that is aluminum bats (which are, by the way, the main reason I don’t get into college baseball at all):

“And he was pitching to aluminum bats, which do not break. That fact is even more important than the fact that they put a few extra feet on fly balls and a few more miles per hour on line drives.

Because aluminum bats do not break, pitching inside becomes problematic, even futile. Jam a batter on his fists with a pitch that would shatter a wooden bat and he still may be able to put it in play or even over the infield for a hit. That is why college baseball games last so long and why college batting averages are so high—and why professional scouts have such a hard time judging college talent. Because of aluminum bats, college pitchers throw fewer fastballs than they otherwise would. They throw curves, sliders, split-fingers and other breaking balls, and they throw them away from the hitters.

This has three pernicious consequences: They do not develop the arm strength that comes from throwing fastballs; they jeopardize their arms with all the torque involved in throwing breaking balls; they do not learn to pitch inside.”

So, aluminum bats actually contribute to the weakening of the Major League pitcher (which, if you look at pitch counts, complete games and win totals, has continued at a dramatic rate since Will’s book was published 20 years ago).

Plus, they make that terrible pinging noise when the ball is hit. I hate aluminum bats.

p.s. One time I broke an aluminum bat in half. This is quite possibly the only piece of evidence in existence that I possess any sort of strength.

Helping Haiti

If you’ve watched any news over the last few days, you’re aware of the utter devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti, and probably, if you’ve watched any of those news reports, you are anxious to help in some way.

Unless you’re a doctor or a nurse, flying down there isn’t helpful (at least, not at this point), and buying “stuff” (food, water, clothing, medical supplies) to send isn’t helpful either, as there is no way to get it there.

Right now, the two best things you can do are to pray for the victims of the earthquake and to send money:

• The American Red Cross has made it easy for you: you can donate $10 to Haiti relief by texting “HAITI” to “90999.”
  
• If you’d like to donate more than that or aren’t a fan of texting, you can donate directly to the Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti here by clicking on the button for the International Response Fund.
• Finally, if you are reading this and happen to go to church with me, we’re working set up a collection which will go directly to a mission contact that we have. More should be announced about this later.

Whatever you do, help in some way. God gives us what we have so we can bless others.