Leftovers: White Sox and Stuff

-- Spencer writes a deeply personal essay on the return of college football.

You don't believe many things until you see them, because people remain visual learners. For instance, You won't believe that you can lose that game, and there the score sits in indisputable yellow lights on the scoreboard. You won't believe now that in four months you will sit at the window and see it all happen all over again and then find yourself staring at the metaphorical piece of paper reading: Football season is over. Camus stated that all reasonable men consider their own suicide. I'm not saying I think it is a noble decision in his case, or in any others. 

If I were going to understand it, though? That first Saturday morning without football would be the day to do that.

-- "Kevin Durant had become the national sports unicorn," writes Tommy Craggs at Slate.

This is how sports heroes are made nowadays--not by some feat of athletic transcendence, but by virtue of not being the bogeyman of the day. Phil Mickelson, once known sneeringly as FIGJAM ("F*** I'm great, just ask me") got himself anointed with oil on account of not being Tiger Woods at the moment it became very bad to be Tiger Woods. A few years ago, in a very different context, sportswriters celebrated Hank Aaron anew for not having been Barry Bonds, even though the two ballplayers had a lot more in common than anyone cared to admit. (In his autobiography, Aaron confessed to trying amphetamines, like everyone else from his era.) And now people praise the allegedly humble Kevin Durant for not being the allegedly narcissistic LeBron James, whom they once praised for not being the allegedly selfish Kobe Bryant, whom they once praised for not being the allegedly thuggish Allen Iverson.

-- "If you're about to bungee jump into a Buddhist temple with a bag of coke in your pocket, you don't spend your time worrying about someone breaking in line. " -- Shoals reasons that we should all accept and appreciate the Heat.

But even more disillusioning than the build-up to free agency was what's passed for NBA coverage, and fandom, in the wake of The Decision. Blanket statement: It was all a huge moralistic, lazy bore, that obscured the fact that we're about to see a team in action that could change everything we thought we knew about basketball. If you think that statement is overcooked, please find words to disagree with it. There has never been a team this grandiose; nor one that offered so many possibilities on the court. How many games the Heat will (or need to) win, whose team it is, and whether karma will rear its ugly head are continuations of a post-Decision mindset. Can we please, for fuck's sake, all stop whining and pointing fingers and get ready for the ride of our lives?

-- Brian Phillips of Run of Play also wrote a really great piece (one of my favorite blog posts of the year, even) titled "Pele as a Comedian". It's too expansive to block quote, so just do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

An impossibly strong week for the sports blogosphere. Way to go, team.







Every time I write about the White Sox I feel obliged to start with an apology: this team is more interesting than the coverage here would suggest. Mostly LeBron's fault, obviously, but I still feel a tad guilty that TUP has turned such a blind eye to baseball in 2010, especially with a team as blog-worthy as these Sox. The peaks feel as high as the valleys feel eternal, and it's made for a season seemingly custom built to appear on a reality show. Things work out funny sometimes.

To that point: of all the mindless winning streaks the Sox have created during this cockeyed season, was the most recent (the one that died Tuesday in Detroit) the most unlikely? I think it's possible. Yes, the others were longer and came when most had already R.I.P.'d the season, but wasn't that also the case just a few weeks ago? August's missteps felt just as damning as what happened in April and May: teams worthy of division championships don't drop three of four to an entity as woeful as the Baltimore Orioles when the going gets tough and expect to live through it. Losing a pair of series against the Twins in the span of a week only reinforced this. The Central, for all intents and purposes, should be in permanent ink already. The fact that the Sox have constructed another meaty winning streak to stay alive while Minnesota continues its torrid pace shows this Sox team has enough talent and enough character to stay in this thing until the absolute end. I wasn't always so sure that was the case.

A season that lacked a definitive moment might have received one on Sunday: the Sox pulled off a totally impossible come-from-behind victory at Fenway just minutes before the Twins won a game on something called "third base coach interference". If it's the day that sums up 2010 for the White Sox, so be it. But please, for a second, focus on the way Minnesota has been playing the last few weeks. Their most recent defeat feels like it took place on the Fourth of July. That the White Sox are still breathing at this point is almost overwhelming. And sure, 4.5 back with 24 to play may mean it's time for a respirator, but haven't we said that before? Like 100 times? There's still three games left against Minnesota, and they come in The Cell. A lot of games come in The Cell, actually: nine of them consecutively, to be specific, all against divisional foes. 

Maybe there is time for TUP to make up for its White Sox ignorance after all. A couple losses by the Twins probably wouldn't hurt.