Where were you when Michael Jackson died?

I'm not sure, less than 24 hours after his passing, that this question will have the same kind of cultural relevance in 10 years that it is currently being assigned. Michael Jackson was not John F. Kennedy or even, arguably, Elvis, in part because, in this age of 24-hour celebrity, our fondest memories of him can't erase the strange and complex narrative that was the last 20 years of his life. We watched it unfold in real time, and it was messy. Jackson, though, is easily one of the most influential people of my youth, and long before he was a punchline, he was the most electric entertainer alive, other than, perhaps, Michael Jordan.

I was driving to Washington D.C. with my friend Gerry, to attend a Nationals vs. Red Sox game, when the news came over the radio that he was dead, and we spent the first few innings of the baseball game trying to wrap our heads around the idea that the man who made "Thriller" and "Billy Jean" really was gone. Between every inning, the Nationals played various songs from his catalogue, and although it initially felt strange, possibly even in poor taste, eventually it felt like the proper tribute. Baseball seemed only mildly interesting anyway. The King of Pop was on everyone's mind. There are very few people who can have the kind of impact on an entire stadium. Nothing grinds our collective culture to a halt anymore, but I guess we can measure someone's influence by how long their memory lingers in our minds even when there is something else right in front of our face to distract us.

Jackson had very little to do with sports, other than putting on one of the most memorable Super Bowl halftime shows in history. But there was a fluidity to the way he physically moved that no athlete, except Jordan, could ever touch. In 1992, Jackson hadn't yet tumbled down into the rabbit hole of weirdness that would define his later years, and so when he released a video for the song "Jam" that featured Jordan, it's hard to describe how big of a cultural moment it was for people in my generation. Jackson wasn't my favorite artist and Jordan wasn't my favorite player, but I remember feeling absolutely riveted when the video debuted on MTV (back when MTV showed videos instead of scripted narcissistic claptrap like The Hills.)

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Posted by Kevin Van Valkenburg at 10:13 AM in The Endorsement, Today's Special | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

Chances are, you never heard of Austin Wood, a pitcher for the Texas Longhorns.

But what an outing he had Saturday. And Sunday. In a game that started in 96-degree heat, the lefty reliever from Kingwood, Texas, punched the clock for 13 shutout innings, including 12 1/3 no-hit innings, to help his team beat Boston College, 3-2, in the NCAA Division I tournament.

And get this: he did it one night after throwing two scoreless innings against Army to open regional competition.

The 25-inning game -- the longest in NCAA history -- consumed seven hours, three minutes. It was so long that it deserved three seventh-inning stretches. The Longhorns and the Eagles combined to throw 683 pitches. The benches were depleted and three players played three different positions.

Wood came on in the seventh inning with the score tied, 2-2, and kept going out until he was relieved in the bottom of the 20th. He faced 41 batters (two over the minimum) and threw 169 pitches, 120 for strikes. He walked just four and struck out 14.

At one point, coach Augie Garrido said he discussed with assistant coach Skip Johnson whether to leave Wood in or take him out. "[Wood] walked by both of us and said, 'I’m not coming out of this game,'" Garrido said.

His Eagles' counterpart, closer Mike Belfiore, entered the game in the ninth inning and kept pitching for 9 2/3 innings. He threw 129 pitches, shutting out Texas on three hits and striking out 11.

If the two had started, the game would have been scoreless into the 10th.

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Posted by Candus Thomson at 9:47 AM in The Endorsement | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Each Monday in the Toy Department, a Sun sports writer will take a moment to offer his or her Endorsement of something he or she feels passionately about. There are no rules, and the subject can be as broad, or as narrow, as the writer chooses. This week, Childs Walker explains why a Filipino boxer is one of the most exciting athletes in the world. For previous editions of The Endorsement, click here.

There aren't five athletes in the world I'd rather watch than Manny Pacquiao. But I bet a lot of you have no clear mental image of him. You could walk by the Pac-Man in a grocery store and have no idea you were in the presence of a world-class athlete. He's about the size a lot of us were in middle school, and he wears the perpetual aw-shucks smile of a regular guy enjoying his regular life.

Put Manny Pacquiao in a boxing ring, however, and he's the furthest thing from regular. I think I first saw him fight eight years ago in a foul-plagued affair with Agapito Sanchez. Pacquiao fought at 122 pounds then and had two chief weapons -- limitless stamina and a straight left hand that hit opponents on the chin before they even knew it had been fired. He defined raw, but those two weapons were awesome enough that he not only hung with great all-around fighters; he beat them. In a sense, his limits helped to produce great fights because he had little alternative to boring straight ahead and firing murderous blows. Pit him again a craftsman such as Juan Manuel Marquez and you had the perfect dramatic contrast.

Too bad many sports fans never saw the fights.

For a large segment of Americans, boxing's golden age passed with Muhammad Ali. Its last mainstream appeal flickered out with the careers of Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield. This nation's athletic pipelines turned to feeding more rewarding, less obviously damaging sports such as basketball and football. Fight coverage leads SportsCenter what, a few times a year? But I can't get across how limited a point of view this is.

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Posted by Childs Walker at 3:15 PM in The Endorsement | Permalink | Comments (13)
        

Each Monday in the Toy Department, a Sun sports writer will take a moment to offer his or her Endorsement of something he or she feels passionately about. There are no rules, and the subject can be as broad, or as narrow, as the writer chooses. This week, Candy Thomson explains how one Maryland gymnast has blossomed into a champion. For previous editions of The Endorsement, click here.

As a world-class gymnast, Courtney Kupets's Achilles' heel is her Achilles' heel. Both of them, as a matter of fact.

Twice in her career, the graduate of Montgomery County's Magruder High School has had to battle back from torn tendons. The first time, she ripped the left tendon at the world championships less than a year before the 2004 Olympics. She came back to win bronze and silver medals at the Athens Summer Games.

Last year, she tore the right tendon, preventing her from defending her 2006 and 2007 all-around titles at the NCAA women's gymnastics championships. She more than made up for it over the weekend, when she regained the overall title, won three individual events (uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise) and led her University of Georgia teammates to the national crown.

Her nine NCAA individual titles makes her the most decorated woman gymnast. Kupets is the first woman to claim a national gymnastics title in every event and in the all-around.

Her coach, Suzanne Yoculan, called Kupets, "the Muhammad Ali of gymnastics — the greatest."

Said Kupets, “I just go out and do what I do.”

How dominant was Kupets at the collegiate championships? She was the only gymnast to qualify for the finals in all four individual events. With 10.0 being a perfect score, Kupets earned a 9.9875 on the balance beam, a 9.95 on the floor exercise and a 9.95 on the uneven bars. She tied for third in the vault, with a score of 9.8563.

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Posted by Candus Thomson at 2:15 PM in The Endorsement | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Each Monday in the Toy Department, a Sun sports writer will take a moment to offer his or her Endorsement of something he or she feels passionately about. There are no rules, and the subject can be as broad, or as narrow, as the writer chooses. This week, Childs Walker says you should watch a new HBO documentary on the greatest heavyweight fight in history. For previous editions of The Endorsement, click here.

Every so often, sport brings together rivals who are so close in skill and commitment that their confrontations cease to feel like games.

These showdowns tend to be the province of individual sports. Great team rivalries produce their own sorts of epic narratives. But I'm talking about the sense of total confrontation between two athletes' life experience, craft, endurance, intelligence, anger, joy and will. These absolute clashes of being produce the most exhilarating and chilling moments in sports. Exhilarating because there's nothing like seeing an absolute master tested absolutely. Chilling, because in the inverse, a near-equal genius throws everything on the line and in the end, fails. 

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal produced this sort of spectacle at Wimbledon last year. But no sport is richer in momentous battles than boxing. The reason is simple and frightening: In an epic fight between epic fighters, both men are willing to die. You can literally watch a man throw decades of day-in-day-out work, pain and accrued skill into a 36-minute competition with the full understanding that, no matter how gifted he is, he might not walk out.

It's primal stuff and no two boxers ever threw more at one another than Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. If their first fight was the greatest sporting spectacle of the 20th century and their second, a relative bore, their third fight, the Thrilla in Manila, was the consumate ending to a blood feud. Many great writers and commentators have committed thousands of great words to Ali and Frazier. Yet the subject remains rich and disquieting enough to keep on giving. So I learned on Saturday night when I watched John Dower's Thrilla in Manila documentary on HBO.  

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Posted by Childs Walker at 8:00 AM in The Endorsement | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

Each week in the Toy Department, a Sun sports writer will take a moment to offer his or her Endorsement of something they feel passionately about. There are no rules, and the subject can be as broad, or as narrow, as the writer chooses. This week, Kevin Van Valkenburg makes the case for why high school basketball should be able to skip college entirely if they want.

LeBron James was featured on 60 Minutes this weekend where he was interviewed by journalist Steve Kroft. Right about the time during the interview when James cupped a basketball and fired it -- underhand -- from three-quarters court in his high school gym, hitting nothing but net, it dawned on me that I was probably watching the most athletically-gifted player of my lifetime.

James is now in his sixth year in the NBA, and it's obvious by this point that he didn't need to attend college to hone his basketball skills. He's an absolute freak of nature at 6-feet-9 and 270 pounds: quick and yet graceful, explosive around the basket, but possessing an artist's touch on the perimeter. Magic Johnson is my favorite player of all time, and James, like so many men his age, grew up worshiping Michael Jordan. Watching him is like seeing a hybrid of those two stars. The next 10 years of his career are going to be an absolute joy to watch, and the fact that he's turned out to be such an astute businessman only makes him all the more likable. I'm glad he didn't play college basketball. He was simply too good for that level. It would have been a waste of time and someone (perhaps even James) most likely would have gotten hurt.

But you know who else makes me believe high school basketball players should be able to jump straight to the NBA if they so choose, without this ridiculous 1-year apprenticeship the NBA now enforces? Darius Miles, Korleone Young, Jonathan Bender and Kwame Brown. And all the other prep stars who either fizzled and disappeared from the league, or never really lived up to their potential.

Because they didn't belong on a college campus anymore than James did.

They wouldn't have suddenly developed as players or as people just because they spent two years reading Madame Bovary, attending frat parties and doing trigonometry. They wouldn't have suddenly become injury-free once they reached the NBA. Their careers would have been, in all likelihood, pretty similar. Dick Vitale just never got the chance to rave about them. You never got the chance to bet on them in an office pool.

In a few days, Lance Stephenson, a New York city prep star who averaged 35 points a game his senior year, will announce whether he's decided to attend Kansas, St. John's, or Maryland. (All signs seem to point to Kansas.) But whatever he decides, no one really believes he'll be there for more than one season. "One and done" is the term, and it's tossed around frequently in college basketball these days, ever since the NBA said it wouldn't admit players until they were one year removed from their high school graduation. And if we were really honest about it, we admit that wanting to watch Stephenson play in college has nothing to do with his own interests and everything to do with our own.

We don't really believe a semester of college will mature a prep star or better prepare him for life in the NBA and beyond. We simply want to be entertained. We want the NCAA tournament to remain exciting. We make the players who don't really want to be there go through a charade instead of simply embracing the athletes who do want to experience college.

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Posted by Kevin Van Valkenburg at 4:20 PM in The Endorsement | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Each week in the Toy Department, a Sun sports writer will take a moment to offer his or her Endorsement of something they feel passionately about. There are no rules, and the subject can be as broad, or as narrow, as the writer chooses. This week, Kevin Van Valkenburg makes the case for refusing to give up playing in his Sunday football league.  

When I was a teenager, my parents were adamant that I pick up a "life sport." I was a pretty decent football player (all things considered, of course; I'll concede that the competition in Montana wasn't exactly on the same level as Texas high school football) and I didn't mind crashing into others at high speeds, or tearing up my elbows and knees when I attempted to make a catch.  

My family, though, was full of golfers, and they were constantly imploring me to face facts. The human body can repair itself pretty easily when you're 16. It does not do quite as well when you're 35. "You need to find a sport you can play when you get older," my mom pleaded. Golf, tennis, and even squash were among the more common suggestions.

I'm 31 now, and certainly a bit heavier than I'd like to be. My parents were right, of course. As I type these words, my right knee aches. My left shoulder throbs. I have a small scar next to my nose that just recently healed. 

Rec football is entirely to blame. 

(Photo: Jennifer McMenamin)

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Posted by Kevin Van Valkenburg at 6:55 PM in The Endorsement | Permalink | Comments (6)