Casey at the bat?
Have you been feeling down? Is it really malaise from the summer heat, or have your thoughts been drifting towards poor Team Canada’s long flight home from Germany (even with Christine Sinclair’s stardom)? I know what you mean. But I think that this week the world of sports has been trying to teach us about finding the silver lining. Looking on the the bright side.
Take Kobe Bryant, for instance. Does the NBA lockout have him moping around? Not in the slightest. In fact, Kobe’s mastered several feelings other than ‘moping’, and the full range of his emotional repertoire is on display in the series of television commercials (foreign and domestic) he has been starring in. He takes on the challenge of professional acting with the same steely intensity he does everything. The man is staying busy this summer, and that’s why he’s showing up in our highlights this week.
1. The good, the bad, and the Toronto Blue Jays. The Jays can’t win a game right now. Dropped last night by a walk-off grand slam (ouch), the two losses before that were to the Boston Red Sox. It’s safe to say we were robbed at home. But we’ve also been known to suffer some severe pitching woes against the Sox. At least Boston faithful Ben Affleck wasn’t available to celebrate. He’s been thinking about New York. Or at least the story of two New York Yankee pitchers, Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich, who were the best of friends, fell in love with each other’s wives, and swapped whole lives with each other (houses, children, pets, etc). Now that’s going to make a movie. I hope Casey Affleck is going to be in it. I loved him in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (see picture above).
2. Advice for Andy Murray. The top ranked British tennis player in the world takes a lot of criticism for not winning Wimbledon. Murray looked like he was about the fourth best player in the men’s draw. And he was ranked fourth. But in order to crack that top three, there’s advice coming in from all sides. There’s the ‘you’re on the right track’ sort of advice (like Djokovic telling him he needs to be just 2 percent better), but stranger still is former British Davis Cup captain David Lloyd. Just show up clean-shaven and dress the part, he says. I think he tipped his hand about who he was going to listen to when he referred to David Lloyd as trapped in the 1980s. And Tim Henman drops some knowledge.
3. Game plan for Canada. It might appear that Team Canada won’t have a drawing board to go back to after losing to Nigeria at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Germany. The 1-0 loss to Nigeria was Canada’s third loss of its opening (and only) three games. The game against France was the heartbreaker. The game against Nigeria was a chance to soften the blow, to regroup. But it was not to be. At least, however, the problem is easy to diagnose. Canada failed to score a single goal in the tournament after it’s streak-ending penalty kick against Germany, and put only three shots on goal for the entire tournament (all by Christine Sinclair).
4. Storm front. Well, the downside of the NBA players being locked out by the owner’s association is pretty apparent: next season is in jeopardy of not being played. But the upside might come to us in the guise of ‘The Barnstorming Tour‘. Will they storm barns? I don’t know. They (a group of elite players, some under contract to NBA teams, some not) will be lead by Kobe Bryant (presumably being funded by shoe companies) on an all-star calibre exhibition tournament of China. Kobe is huge in Asia, so his brand power will explode, we might get some weird and interesting basketball to watch (that happens outside of the cookie-cutter format of North American pro sports), and maybe all this barnstorming will even put some pressure on negotiations with the owners in the NBA if it gives fans a product from which the teams have been left out. But always heed the warnings of NBA commissioner David Stern: I know where the bodies are buried.
5. The beautiful false start. Copa America begins in dramatically underwhelming fashion. And it might be getting the host team Argentina down a little bit, failing to get a win in either of their first two games. But take a lesson from Brazil. Equally unimpressive in their opening match, they have refused to abandon the true spirit of soccer (as evidenced by ‘pure soccer’ football haircuts).
