Neither New Beginning nor Old End

I don't have any earth-shattering year's end entry to this blog, just some rambling thoughts on how the last year has gone and what's in store for the next.

2006 was a pretty good year for me as a runner. It started rather inauspiciously, with a 23:55 5k hampered by an untied shoelace but that would not have matched the previous year's time even if I had not wasted 30 seconds fumbling to tie a double bow with cold gloved fingers. Indeed, this was not my year for 5ks. I did record a 22:05 for a 5k on a course that was, um, uncertified, but other than that, the fastest one I turned was the 23:28 I did for a time trial in a pre-Thanksgiving turkey trot race. Still, the big picture for 2006 is all positive: out of 18 races I ran this year, I placed in the top 5 in my age group 5 times, finished in the top 3 four times, and won my age group 3 times. I ran my first sub-four-hour marathon this year in a race infamous for its relentless hills, and to cap it all off, won my track club's racing points series for my age group. I can't complain, and I won't.

Still, I want to get better, faster, fitter, and to have more fun. That's not a New Year's resolution, as I have but one standing New Year's resolution, which is not to make any fucking New Year's resolutions. Rather, I am motivated to work toward substantial improvement by several factors, including increased confidence (if I can train to finish the Spinx marathon in under 4 hrs., I can train to PR in some shorter races), better gear (the Garmin Forerunner 205 GPS device I got for Christmas), impending age (I estimate that I have until age 45 to reach maximum speed, though perhaps much later for endurance), and desire to get fitter (a resting pulse around 50, maybe?). That would be just as true if this were August 31 as it is tonight.

So tomorrow, no matter how I feel, I will be doing one of two things: 10x400 at the track if it's not too wet, or 25 min. tempo in the neighborhood if the track has too many puddles. Some way to spend a New Year's Day, I know; but I also know that I won't be the only one doing it. There are a hell of a lot of us out there, from all walks of life and with lots of different motivations. Some of us will have fancy GPs devices, some will have watches, and some will be equipped only with a pair of sturdy shoes and their thoughts. And tomorrow we'll be out there, in the air of the new year -- much like the old, but with a host of new possibilities as well as lots of scratched-out dates on registration forms and checks.

James Brown (1933-2006)
I couldn't let this one go by without posting it.  James Brown was an eccentric, erratic, and occasionally even a dangerous man, but was also a unique artist who was often copied, but never equaled.

A New Beginning

After much thought and no action, I have finally realized that the only way to revamp this blog is to start writing -- oh yes, and to change the name. Baseball blogs are a dime a dozen, as are blogs specifically on the Braves; and sometimes I have nothing of substance to say about baseball, anyway. In fact, from the looks of this blog, I don't have anything substantial to say about it for weeks at a time, and this is especially true in the fall and winter months. 

As a result, the subject matter of this blog is about to broaden, still to include baseball on occasion but also to deal with other subjects such as politics and running. Indeed, it was my involvement in the sport of running that inspired the blog's new name, Smell the Clock. Perhaps I should explain:

There is a half-marathon that I run every year in Greer, SC. The course is surprisingly non-hilly for the Greenville area, but one of the obstacles one encounters along the course is a fast-food restaurant called The Clock, located on the side of the street at about the twelve-mile mark, that emanates a strong smell of frying chicken that under any other circumstances I would find quite appetizing but have a hard time stomaching after twelve miles of half-marathon-pace running. I had mentioned the smell to my wife after first running the race, and after I finished it the second time she asked me: "Did you smell the clock this time?" The more I thought about it, the more I find it an apt metaphor for running as well as for other aspects of life. Now sometimes when I'm nearing the end of a race, I think to myself: "you can smell the clock now. You are almost there."

I decided to make this phrase the new name for this blog yesterday morning, while running the brutal Paris Mountain 20k for the third time. I was considerably warmer yesterday than it usually is on the day of this race -- too warm, in fact, to run 2.5 miles  straight up a mountain and 4 back down, only to have to deal with several more miles of rolling hills before dragging wobbly legs and a sour stomach across the finish line. As I approached the final 2 miles, well off my PR pace, I caught the lipidinous aroma of Pete's, a diner similar to The Clock, and thought again about my Greer half-marathon experience. I knew that a name would come to me eventually, and that it would probably come at a time when I least expected it. And there it was. And here it is.

In Memoriam

I had indicated earlier that I was going to shift the primary focus of this blog away from baseball; but I could not pass up the opportunity to celebrate the lives of two baseball's finest, who recently left us. I regret that I have been saddled with work obligations and thus was unable to comment upon the passing of Buck O'Neill in a timely manner, as he was undoubtedly a prominent figure in Negro League baseball and a pivotal one in the integration of Major League Baseball. In addition, he was reportedly one of the classiest men who ever played the game, a man who harbored no bitterness even though he had every right to do so, and a favorite interview subject of sportswriters. He will be sorely missed, but he had a long and fruitful life. Well done, sir.

And just today, I heard of the untimely passing of Joe Niekro, a man who, while not as great a player or prominent a figure as Buck O'Neill (not to mention his brother Phil), was a colorful character with a long and distinguished career. One of my favorite Joe Niekro stories involves a Ball-doctoring incident that occurred during his final season with the Astros (yeah, I know cheating normally isn't funny, but this was; and besides, ball-doctoring is far from the worst transgression that baseball players regularly commit: steroids, anyone?). Anyway, I don't recall who the Astros were playing, or who the umpires were, but the opposing manager accused Niekro of having an emery board in his possession, which he was allegedly using to scuff baseballs. When the entire umpiring crew went to the mound to confront him, Niekro decided to try an old schoolboy trick on them. Palming the emery board in his right hand, in one deft motion he dropped it to the ground at hip level while raising his hands in the air, palms outward, to show that he had nothing in them. The funny thing is, in a stadium full of people and with four umpires looking directly at him, it almost worked. Three of the four umpires looked up at his hands; but a fourth looked down, and seeing the emery board lying on the mound at Niekro's feet, picked it up and summarily gave Joe the heave-ho. It still ranks as one of the funniest damn things that I have ever seen in my thirty-plus years of following Major League Baseball.

Totally Off Base

First, let's get the baseball out of the way. The Braves split two doubleheaders with the Phillies this weekend, which wasn't enough. the second game Saturday and the first game yesterday were quite ugly. Now they have to play three games against the Mets, which will likely be even uglier. The season is, for all intents and purposes, over.

Now to something that, while no more pleasant or relevant, is at least original.

The first time I saw a promo for the movie Snakes on a Plane, I thought: "Great. The world just got a little stupider." Yet I had no idea just how much stupider: for not only was such a moronic title taken in stride, it was praised for its straightforwardness and its "sledgehammer effect."

So this is the wave of the future now: banal movie titles written in the simplest English possible: I should have seen it coming. After all, it is the reign of King George II, and nuance is for sissies.

So what can we look forward to in this brave new post- intellectual world? Here are some movie titles that we may well be seeing in the not-so-distant future:

      1. People Blowing Shit Up

      2. Lots of Car Chases and Stuff

      3. Talking Babies are Funny

      4. Excuse for Naomi Watts to Wear Something Skimpy

       5. Tired, Recycled Crap, Part II

       6. Some Chinese Guys Fighting

       7. Ron Howard Wants More Money

       8. Black Cop White Cop

       9. Trying to Make Women Cry

     10. Monsters! Aieeee!

So You Wanna Play, Huh?

Here is an old (2003) discussion thread I found through Google, apparently from a USC fan site, which calls Bart Wright's journalistic integrity into question. I suggest that the reader take it with a grain of salt, as the posters have obvious biases; but some of the complaints made there concerning suggesting tendencies toward vindictiveness and playing fast and loose with facts sound very familiar. For example, at the top of the thread is a long and thougtful post, in which the poster complained that Wright "jumped feet first into a controversial topic without doing his homework." That sounds a lot like the Bart Wright I've come to know and love in the past few days.

What his reply to me made abundantly clear was that he does not have much regard for facts. To Bart, life's a big game of "Survivor," where loyalty and alliances matter more than anything else. That shows in the assumptions he made about me, e.g., I appeared to him to be "against" downtown, so therefore I must be "for" the county council; which is absurd, for I can't stand most of them, either. 

By the way, I am unsure of the exact nature of the incident or incidents in question, or what was in that FAX that they were discussing. If I find out anything more, I will post it.

 UPDATE: Here's a link to Wright's original column about the FAX incident, which apparently concerned alleged dirty recruiting by USC. He was indeed quite nasty with his detractors, at one point subtly suggesting that they might be pedophiles.

It's looking more and more like there might be a pattern here. I plan to keep looking, and to post anything of substance that I find.

Bart Wright fucked with the wrong "Internet chatter nerd" this time.

UPDATE II: More evidence of inconsistency in Bart Wright's reporting.

_{"I guess it take all kinds"}

Now It's personal (Apparently)

I tried to post this in a lengthy entry last night, which was lost. One of these days I'll remember to copy before I post. Anyway, I want to get this up before I go to work, so if it's a bit too brief, I'll flesh it out later.

Below is a copy of an e-mail I sent to Greenville News sports columnist Bart Wright, whose in his column in Monday's edition singing the praises of the new downtown ballpark invited criticism of the new park and comparison to the old. The letter I sent him is unremarkable in itself. In fact, most of it is a condensation of the "Highway to Hell" entry on this blog that describes my unpleasant experiences at West End Field and why I liked the atmosphere of the old ballpark better.

What is remarkable is Mr. Wright's nasty reply to my message. Anyone reading both letters can see that I was nothing but a gentleman to Mr. Wright, and never attacked him personally. He, on the other hand, treated me like something he had just scraped off the bottom of his shoe.

Mr. Wright chose to dismiss my specific criticisms of the new ballpark as the product of a "grudge" that is "political in nature," an increasingly popular means of discrediting an argument with which one does not agree. But what I cannot figure out is what side he thinks I'm on. Am I a ranting redneck or a filthy hippie? It's hard to tell from the tone of his message.

Looks like I hit a nerve when I criticized the downtown business elite. Which is understandable; after all, he works for their booster organ. To be fair, he does make a couple of good points; but they are obscured by the arrogant, condescending tone of his message -- not to mention a host of typos. One thing I do wish to clarify right here, right now is that I DO like downtown Greenville -- which is why I don't want to see these assholes fuck it up.

By the way, one would think that a professional writer would proof his messages better.

August Reflections
Unfortunately, like the Braves, this blog has turned out to be an enormous bust this year. It's my own fault, no one else's; and since I am, to my knowledge, the only visitor to this blog, I write this only for cyber-posterity, for I believe that all experiments, no matter how futile, should be thoroughly documented.

Don't let the tone fool you. I write this with a light heart and an ear for humor, as well as a blogger's sense of the possible. I have no reason to be hung up, after all. I'm the only one here.

It is obvious that the Braves are in a rebulding year -- obvious, that is, to everyone but them. True to form, they made yet another bad pre-deadline trade, dealing off a piece of their future for a short-term fix, made even more pointless by the fact that their chances of making the postseason this year are slim and none.

But unlike the Braves' management, I am fully aware of my limitations, and do not intend to attempt any last-minute heroics with this blog this season. Like the Braves, it is done, at least for the short term. It will, however, go on, although in what form I cannot say with certainty at this point. While I will likely continue to write about the Braves, there is a good chance that they will not be the primary focus of this blog in the future. I will doubtless continue to write about baseball; but baseball may not always be the focus. After all, there is so much else going on in the world, and much of it is interesting. And absurd. And maddening. It deserves to be written about. And let's face it: the Braves suck this year.

Wickman Yet to Get Save Op
Between Ken Ray's self-destruction last night and the rainout today, we have yet to see Wickman take the mound in a Braves uniform. I do believe that the Braves will get their money's worth out of him, given that the sacrifice they made was quite small. I saw Max Ramirez catch for Rome earlier this season during my disappointing trip to the new Greenville ballpark (see "Highway to Hell" below), and thought he looked O.K.; but the Braves have an overabundance of catching talent in their organization, including better prospects than Ramirez. In sum, it was a good trade, and perhaps the only one that they will make.

Braves Acquire Wickman from Indians

It looks like the Braves may have finally found themselves a closer, and didn't have to pay a huge price for him (minor league catcher Max Ramirez).

The second half just might be interesting after all.