I’m not big on nationalism and sports, so I’m not sorry that the US Women’s soccer team lost the World Cup final. From what I heard, the US women had numerous chances to put Japan away, but the scrappy Asian women stayed close and won in a shootout. Japan, still reeling from the tsunami and radioactive fallout, needed it more that we do.

Is the NFL Lockout about to end? The sides are reportedly near a new Collective Bargaining Agreement that would have football up and rolling by Monday. It’s about time….

Meanwhile, with no urgency whatsoever about losing any games, the NBA and its union aren’t even meeting.

Over the past two summers, I was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for work and since I was staying downtown, I walked over the PNC Park, paid a mere $27 each time, and had a great seat within the first 15 rows, once behind home plate, the other time behind the White Sox dugout (interleague play) to watch one of the most moribund franchises in baseball, the Pittsburgh Pirates. It might be a little harder to get those seats now.
For the Pirates, the team that hasn’t had a winning record in nearly two decades; is sitting in first place in the National League Central. The once proud franchise of Clemente, Stargell, and Dave Parker had received attention in the first half for just playing .500 ball, but as of today, they are 50-44, playing .532 ball and ½ game ahead of the Cardinals and Brewers.
Of course, this is a weak division – the Pirates would be tied for third in the AL East eight games behind the Yankees; in third in the AL West, five games behind Texas; third in the NL East, nine behind the Phillies; and also third in the NL West five behind the Giants. (Of course, they would be in second place and only one game out of first in the AL Central, the other “weak sister” division.)
I have been an advocate of contraction of the professional sports leagues and one of the teams I would eliminate are the Pirates. That really hasn’t changed – the Pirates’ owners don’t have enough money to be competitive; and what few fans the Bucs had have lost interest. My argument remains that if the fans don’t care, then what’s the point? The Pirates didn’t sell out when they had pre-steroidal Barry Bonds and Andy Van Slyke in the playoffs, so they don’t really deserve a team now. Besides, Pittsburgh is a football town. I have remarked that if there were no Steelers, Pittsburgh residents would have nothing to wear. Even in the summer, black t-shirts, hats and all manner of Steeler gear is worn. You may see an occasional Penguins shirt, but very little Pirate stuff.
PNC Park is another beautiful ballpark, but in my opinion, it just delayed the inevitable. The Pirates would last another 10-15 years to an empty park, then quietly fold or move to somewhere else.
I credit the players, and coaches who have the Pirates in contention. I hope they finish strong. Maybe this will mark a turnaround in the team’s fortunes. If not, however, perhaps Bud “Head in the Sand” Selig and the other owners along with the union will look and ask again whether franchises in Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Miami, and Washington D.C. should exist.

As I left the UIC Pavillion Saturday night, all I could think about was the song by the satiric band “Spinal Tap” – “Heavy! Duty! Rock and Roll.” No, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean weren’t playing – I went to see a band that I had always wanted to see – Soundgarden.
I got on the bandwagon late (no pun intended), I didn’t hear much of the band’s first album “BadMotorFinger,” but I played the hell out of 1994’s “Superunknown.” Most people know that CD for the band’s biggest hit “Black Hole Sun,” but I loved the entire CD. It was my number one album of the year by far. When “Down on the Upside” came out, I did like it, just not as much as “Superunknown.”
So, I wanted to see them live, but as these things go, I was too late – the band broke up. I still loved singer Chris Cornell’s voice and I thought that his first solo record “Euphoria Morning,” was extremely good. Then, he joined up with ¾ of Rage Against the Machine and formed Audioslave, which was a pale shadow of both Rage and Soundgarden. Then, I think, Cornell got lost, doing a CD with a cover of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” as a sad song, then he did an electronica/pop record that, while not as bad as critics said, wasn’t good.
I said all along that Soundgarden ended too soon, and I was happy when they reformed last year for Lallapalooza. I didn’t go because I don’t like being in massive crowds (see my blog on the U2 show from a couple of weeks ago), and I would have been very angry anyway because Soundgarden was playing at the same time as another favorite of mine – Arcade Fire. They also played a fans’ only set at the Aragon “Brawlroom,” but I’m too old to stand up for 3 hours at a show.
When it was announced that they would be playing the UIC Pavilion, I got a ticket (in the seating part of the arena). The first thing that came to me as I went in was that the Pavilion was smaller than I remembered. The last time I had been there was for U2 in 1985. Then there were the headbangers, and stoners of various ages (including mine). I had seen crowds like this turn ugly, but while there was a mosh pit trying to form on the main floor, everybody was pretty cool and nice.
The opening act, The Mars Volta, was a band I had heard of, but never seen them live or heard their music. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear them this time either – they were victims of the muddy sound of the old barn and while they were energetic and well received, I couldn’t say that I liked or disliked their music. The lead singer was trying to evoke Iggy Pop, Jagger, and the late Ian Curtis, but the sound came out in a dull roar. I would like to hear their music properly.
It did make me scared for the headliners – if their sound was bad, it was going to make for a crappy night out. I need not have worried – Soundgarden stomped out in full heavy metal thrash. The first thing I noticed was bass player Ben Shepherd was the largest bass player I’d ever seen – perhaps the biggest rock and roll musician I had ever seen. And he was carrying the biggest bass guitar I’d ever seen, and he was laying down a bottom end that was massive, and he was stalking the stage like he was going to beat someone up very badly, very soon.
Drummer Matt Cameron, who was once in Pearl Jam, was bashing and thrashing at the kit (I think he is better suited for Soundgarden), while guitarist Kim Thayil, looking like a Indian Jerry Garcia with long white infused beard and ponytail, was hitting all of his notes. And at the center of it was Cornell with that voice!
I have to admit that I was a bigger fan of the late stages of the band, but I came out with a better appreciation of the earlier, heavier material (the first time that has happened in a long time as well). I had a great time, reminding of the harder concerts I saw long ago – Black Sabbath at the Amphitheatre; The Ramones at Northwestern; The Clash twice at the Aragon; even the reformed Sex Pistols also at the Aragon. It was fun!
The old man was still rocking!

If you thought that Jim Tressel and Terrelle Pryor leaving Ohio State would bring the whole sad affair to an end, you’d be wrong. Obviously, the university hoped so, but it saw that the NCAA is bringing the hammer down on the football program; so, the school announced today that it is vacating its wins from the 2010 football season, including its share of the Big 10 championship and the Buckeyes’ victory over Arkansas in the 2011 Sugar Bowl. The university also is putting the football program on probation for two years, which means there would be harsher penalties if any further wrongdoing is discovered.
You would say that the university is taking its medicine, but I don’t. This is a self imposed sanction to try to keep the NCAA from levying harsher penalties. To show that the university is not serious, the university also said that it is waiving a $250,000 fine imposed on Tressel and changing his resignation to a retirement. Despite saying that he took responsibility for failing to report players receiving improper benefits, and the fact that Tressel made millions of dollars from the university, Ohio State is “forgiving him” the quarter-of-a-million fine it had imposed.
You can just hear the conversation in the back office in Columbus – “We can’t ask him to pay up, especially when we thought he’d still be getting his multi-million dollar salary for being coach this season, but Tressel had stunk up the joint so badly this time, that someone had to take the fall.” The Athletic Director didn’t want to lose his job. OSU’s President who famously quoted that he hoped that Tressel wouldn’t fire him, didn’t want to lose his cushy job. So, as a final gift for not taking them with him, the Ad and President called Tressel’s leaving “retirement” knowing that no BCS university would hire him, and let him keep the $250,000.
What nice guys! What sleazy guys! What hypocrites!

For the second time in two years, a fan fell out of the stands at a Texas Rangers game trying to get a ball. Shannon Stone, a 39-year-old Brownwood, Texas firefighter, flipped over the railing of the outfield seats, falling 20 feet onto his head and died. The biggest horror was that this all happened in front of his young son. Another fan fell from the second deck at the Ballpark at Arlington last year trying to catch a ball and suffered a fractured skull and broken leg and ankle.
As a former Andy Frain usher here in Chicago, I’ve seen many people injured at sporting events. Baseballs and bats flying into the stands; people diving trying to catch footballs on field goals and extra points (before the net was there to catch them). I remember when a couple of guys fell off the ramp leading to the upper deck at Wrigley Field in 1984. I was the first person on the scene, and saw the two men sprawled across the wooden seats in the Terrace seats (back of the lower deck). I called the security on my walkie-talkie, grabbed a couple of ushers and began clearing the area of fans. It was after the game, so people were already leaving and no one was landed on, but of course, people wanted to take a look. The nurse got there and the ambulance crews arrived and once we got everyone out of the park and got them on the way to the hospital, we did the paperwork. I remember going to one of the nearby bars that evening – I needed it after seeing that.
Fortunately, no one died in that incident, although I did have a guy have a heart attack in the lower boxes at Wrigley. No baseball or other stressor, he just had a heart attack – and I remember that he didn’t make it, and again surrounded by family.
It’s funny that to a few people, a sports stadium is a place of sadness instead of a fun place (and I don’t mean that as a slam on the Cubs for once).

That is, 75,000 close friends. I went to see U2 at Soldier Field Tuesday night. I didn’t go in 2009, but bought tickets for the second round of the tour. Unfortunately, no one expected the wait to be 364 days due to Bono’s back surgery. I have seen them numerous times before, but I was already tired from a very busy weekend with the Indignant Family, and so, I didn’t really have high expectations, even though I was excited to see the opening act – Interpol.
Of course, the first thing you see is “The Claw,” the 164 foot stage that covered about half of the Soldier Field floor. Even though I was sitting in the 300 level at the other end of the stadium, it allowed me to see everything even though the actual people were ants.
Interpol came out with the sun still shining and the fact that most people didn’t know their music. They were very good; I would like to see them again in a smaller setting.
U2 didn’t come out until 8:50, and it was vaguely depressing as the screen showed various figures of problems in the world: i.e. total numbers of births and deaths; total number of suicides that day; days left of oil; days left of coal; etc. All of that went away when the band hit the stage though.
Call me a cynic, but while I love “Achtung Baby” and “Zooropa,” having them open with four songs from Baby was pure marketing and a bit crass. Since I know that the band is working on a $100+ box set of the albums (which I was going to buy since I love them), the songs came off as a reminder for this year’s Christmas gift.
That said (and I should mention that the band did my all time favorite song of theirs – “Stay (Faraway So Close)”), it was a very good show. The band sounded great, and I must admit that despite the huge stage, the band didn’t rest on the huge technological stage. They used it, of course, and it was impressive, especially with the screen able to move up and down, and later extend into a huge funnel that expanded the images of the band.
The set list was predominantly from the “Achtung” and “Zooropa” eras, with “Out of Control” being the earliest song and only three songs from the underappreciated “No Line on the Horizon.” (I was surprised that the radio friendly “Magnificent” didn’t make the set list.) But it was a satisfying show, with a lyrical moment as just a few sprinkles dropping from the sky during the church-like “When The Streets Have No Name.”
This was my first trip into the long ago renovated Soldier Field and I was impressed with the structure; however, getting out was a chore as trying to get all those people back to their cars/downtown/public transportation was a huge pain. The police were keeping people off the Field Museum grass, which was fine, but the lemming-like people who shuffled with all of the speed of George Romero zombies while having to stop to take pictures which in the dark weren’t going to come out anyway, was very annoying. So, probably no more Soldier Field shows for me.

More action in sports today is occurring in legal courts, not on the playing courts, fields, or fields. The NFL and their players are in heavy negotiations trying to come to an agreement. The NBA lockout just started and, as I wrote last week, with no critical deadline approaching, the two sides will do nothing but make comments to the press until Labor Day.
Baseball, for once is not having labor problems, but for the second time this year, one of its greatest and most controversial stars are on trial. Last Spring, it was Barry Bonds; starting tomorrow, it will be Roger Clemens’ turn. Bonds was convicted on one count of obstruction of justice, but the jury deadlocked on the three counts of perjury in his trial
Tomorrow in Washington D.C. Clemens, who won seven Cy Young Awards and ranks as the ninth-most all-time wins among pitchers, goes on trial this week in a federal court just blocks from the U.S. Capitol, where he allegedly lied to Congress in 2008.
Clemens, 48, has pleaded not guilty to a six-count indictment and denied he ever used steroids during this career. He was charged with one count of obstruction of justice, three counts of making false statements and two counts of perjury.
Both Clemens and Bonds were acclaimed for their achievements, but both were surly, unpleasant people to be around for teammates, fans and the press. Unlike Bonds, who stood trial where he grew up and spent most of his career, Clemens’ trial is in the nation’s capital San Franciscans generally stood behind Bonds through all of his travails, while Clemens’ will have fewer “home town fans” when the court begins jury selection tomorrow.
Also, unlike Bonds, the prosecution has Clemens’ personal trainer testifying. Prosecutors in the Bonds case couldn’t get Bonds’ trainer Greg Anderson to testify against the man with the most home runs in baseball history. Anderson even served time in prison covering for his former employer.
The Clemens case will settle on who the jurors believe. On February 13, 2008, Clemens testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and denied ever using steroids. However, his testimony was a far cry from what his former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, said. McNamee, who served as Clemens’ trainer until 2007 which was the year Clemens retired from baseball, that he gave illegal performance-enhancing drugs to the pitcher.
All of this will unfold over the next few weeks. The media will cover it; Clemens will show a stone face, with all questions answered by his attorneys. Meanwhile, baseball will continue with the All Star Game soon. Bug “Head in the Sand” Selig will in Phoenix next week, but he will not be at Clemens’ trial, nor will he say or do anything of significance as his sport gets yet another black eye under his watch.