‘Sugar’ too broadly sketches Iowa and cuts corners with baseball, but its subversion of sports-movie expectations is refreshingly authentic.
‘Harvard Beats Yale’ ably manages character, context, and Gore/Bush digressions, but it fumbles the game: erratic pacing and odd inclusions.
The morning after the Red Sox won the 2007 World Series (following two miserable seasons of championship drought), two people approached me in McDonald’s. I was wearing a Red Sox shirt. We were in northern Arkansas, beginning an 11-hour drive north after a weekend of wedding festivities. Incidentally, I eat at McDonald’s about as often as the Red Sox win the World Series.
I get irritated by commentators who claim that major-college football and men’s basketball are a priori corrupt. (I’m talking about you, King Kaufman.) I don’t disagree with the assertion; I object to the conclusion as an unsubstantiated premise, an article of faith. On the other hand, we often create this mythic aura of purity around underdogs.
Odds and ends before we head off to New Orleans for a wedding. The Sopranos, Ebert on Unknown White Male, and the beauty of a short baseball season.
Murderball is the perfect movie to show to people who think they don’t like documentaries, because it transcends the genre; above all else, it’s a very good sports movie – compelling, fun, smart, and accessible.
Mr. 3000 is the Dave of sports movies. Which is to say: It’s a good-hearted fantasy that sacrifices accuracy of detail in its chosen arena (in this case, baseball) in the interest of being emotionally resonant.
My beloved Illinois men’s basketball team is very, very good, but this is ridiculous. It’s almost as bad as the anchor at ESPNEWS who asked Tuesday after Illinois won at Michigan State where the Fighting Illini rank among the greatest college-basketball teams ever. Sheesh.
As a longtime despiser of all things Michael Jordan, it’s nice to see that I’m not alone in my distaste. Charles Pierce dismantles the iconic huckster/former basketball player for Slate: “He talked like a man raised by focus groups.” And: “He’s gone from the game without a single footprint. He built upon the work of others, but he left very little of his own behind.”
At the request of my wife – who is irritated that Red Sox Haiku isn’t updated more frequently – I offer this poetry gem, written in crayon by us over beer one night.
