I guess I should clarify a statement from my last post. I never meant to include TheKobraKommander (the reader with whom I've conducted a running debate on the Roger Clemens saga) in with whiners like Simmons and Shaughnessy. At least TheKobraKommander has focused more on the facts of the case as presented in the Mitchell Report and avoided whining and pandering about what Clemens may or may not have done.

Since he went through the trouble of commenting on the post, I figured I'd throw this clarification up tonight.

TheKobraKommander has left a new comment on your post "It's not very often I find myself changing my mind...":

No doubt about the CHB and Simmons. I never said that Clemens doesn't deserve a fair hearing, I've merely said that: 1) The Mitchell Commission has reason to be suspicious and they didn't just pull Clemens' name out of a hat 2) Clemens has put himself in a dangerous legal position by accusing McNamee of lying.

The best thing Clemens could have done was to refuse to speak to the media or anyone about anything; just keep his head down, play ball, and let the truth take care of itself. You never win by playing the media's game, as you yourself seem to admit here.

I kinda like Seau's hat. He looks pretty dapper in them Sunday going to meeting clothes. Besides, it's cold out; don't you know that 90% of body heat is lost through the head?

BTW: can't Brady afford a tie and cufflinks?


The Kobra Kommander

I do think that Clemens may have embarked on a risky venture, but he really had no choice. To borrow an adage from political campaigning, a charge not answered is a charge believed. And if Clemens is telling the truth, he should have very little to fear in a court of law. After all, he ought to be able to buy better lawyers than McNamee can, and it ought to be enough to get by in a civil proceeding.

As for his sentiment that Seau looked good in that sporty little hat, I guess all I can say is that he would think a ridiculous get up like that looked good. I think Al Czervik said it best when he said: "Oh, this is the worst-looking hat I ever saw. What, when you buy a hat like this I bet you get a free bowl of soup, huh?" I, however, cannot extend to Junior Seau the simple sarcastic pleasantry that Al offered the Judge when he saw him wearing the same hat.

As for Brady, there's just something about him that bothers me. He has absolutely no charisma. That's why he doesn't get the national ads that go to Peyton Manning, it has nothing to do with however many B-list actresses he's knocked up or not. There's a reason why he does print ads for Stetson, who knew they were still in business, by the way? He's a pretty boy with the IQ of a turnip and the stage presence of a bad mime in South Station at rush hour. Say what you want about Manning with his "Aw, shucks" Junior Simple mannerisms, but apparently it resonates in red states.

Brady did look like a tool without the tie and cuff links. If you're going to rock an ensemble like Brady was rocking the other day, it has to be complete. A guy in a Savile Row suit without a tie and in a French cuff shirt without cuff links might just as well show up with unshined shoes. I am not much of a fashion plate, myself, but when I take the trouble to dress up, I try not to do things half-assed.

Not that any one in New England necessarily cares, but on this date in history in 1921, the Decatur Staleys relocated to Chicago, where they became the Chicago Bears. I bring this up because I think, given average luck, the Bears will bounce back in a big way next season. Even in spite of my ghastly track record.

Over the last five weeks or so of this past season, the Bears defense started to look like the defense we all came to expect after 2005 and 2006. Nathan Vasher and Charles Tillman ought to be back in form after an injury plagued season. Darwin Walker started to look like the player he could be and not a dead weight in the middle at the end of the year.

Of course there are some problem areas. Most notably, with Kyle Orton as the best QB on the team, it might be time to give up football and look into other career opportunities. Then there is Cedric Benson. I still say he looked a lot better in his last two games before the injury and was on the verge of something good. Plus, after this unfortunate season, Bears fans needn't worry, Benson will not be joining the Pork Chop Express (my fantasy team, I stole the name from Big Trouble in Little China) for the rest of his life.

It seems every so often someone has to come out with a list ranking something. God forbid anything stand on its own. Everything has to be ranked and compared and contrasted. It helps writers of columns and magazine/web content editors fill up space on short notice with a minimum of effort. The list that is bothering me at the moment is Moviefone's list of the top 25 sports movies of all time.

Among my many problems with this list is that I don't really consider Jerry Maguire (ranked number 15) a sports movie. Yeah, the title character is an agent, and Cuba Gooding would go on to win Best Supporting Actor playing a character who is a wide receiver. And there are somewhere on the order of 1 million athletes who make cameo appearances. But the movie is only peripherally concerned with sports, and at that it comments on the crass commercial aspects of the sports industry. It's more about the agent's personal growth set against the backdrop of professional turmoil than about sports.

My real problem with this list is the film at number 3. It's Bull Durham. I hate to be the one who breaks this to the American sports fan, but that film sucks. Before you cough and splutter and stutter "S-s-s-s-s-sucks" like Judge Smails from the underrated (based on this list which placed it at number 6) Caddyshack, that's right. I said Bull Durham sucks. And it gets worse with age.

Every person who defends the movie feels compelled to dismiss the fact that a three year old girl could play a can't miss minor league pitching prospect more plausibly than Tim Robbins at some point in the conversation. Even worse is the name the writer bestowed on him. Nuke LaLoosh? Why not name him Douchebag, Total Tool, Fist Magnet or some other similar name?

Then there is the famous Kevin Costner speech. If you are a Baby Boomer looking back on your life and realizing that you've done nothing worth doing, and might just as well not have existed in the first place, then that speech about baseball and the small of a woman's back is right up there with now is the winter of our discontent. But if you can, in fact, while away the hours talking with the flowers (an elaborate way to say you have a brain), then the speech rings hollow as it should.

This piece in Salon described the movie as a "pastoral vision for hipsters". That is most likely correct, and it's also what's wrong with the movie. Nobody talks like Kevin Costner in that sequence. When do you ever get a chance to get across a 3 paragraph pick up line? If it's going to work, that probably means that you were in to begin with, and the odds of getting a woman to change her mind by lecturing her have to somewhere in the millions to one against range.

I'm not, thank God, the only person who hates Bull Durham. Bob Halloran, whose work in the Metro has been criticized in this blog, wrote this surprisingly amusing and insightful piece on the awfulness of Bull Durham a few years ago. I'll have to keep that in mind when baseball season starts in earnest and it's time to rip the Red Sox just about every day. Maybe I'll have to be nicer the next time I write about a piece Halloran writes for the Metro.

More than any of the other deficiencies of this film, it's the Costner speech, or more precisely the manner in which it's quoted, that irritates me about Bull Durham. The movie came along at a time in the 1980s when the white collar fan took over sports. This new type of fan was college educated and felt the need to prove it. But how do you prove you're smart without proving you're a nerd in the process? The answer...quote movies.

I'm aware of the fact that I quote movies all the time in this space. I think the difference between me quoting a wide array of movies and the people who quote Bull Durham is that I usually quote movies that aren't widely quoted (how many people do you know who quote Die Hard or Miller's Crossing or Kelly's Heroes?) and they're much better than Bull Durham. In his second essay on Rudyard Kipling, Orwell ripped the imperialist faction because they "set Kipling on a pedestal, and some of his more sententious poems, such as 'If,' were given almost Biblical status."

That's what these fans have done with Bull Durham. It's become the Bible for the 40+ year old washed up never-was when they talk about baseball. I don't believe in the hanging curve. I don't care when you open your damn Christmas presents. Baseball isn't a metaphor for life. Baseball isn't even a metaphor for for baseball. It's just a sport, and a half-assed hipster movie about it is no better than any other half-assed hipster movie from that time period.

The number two was a strange choice, or at least I thought so. It was Raging Bull. For some reason, I just don't think of Raging Bull as a sports movie. I think it was a great cinematic achievement. But whether it's the black and white cinematography or the fact that it seems more influenced by European films of the 50s and 60s than American sports movies or the fact that its production values are so different from the other movies on the list, I just don't think of Raging Bull as a boxing movie.

Rocky was the number one sports movie of all time, according to the list, and I have no problem with that. But when I discussed this topic with a friend of mine tonight, he pointed out that Rocky's non-boxing life, and, in particular, his relationship with Adrian take up much more of the movie than the fight with Creed. That is true, but that doesn't bother me as far as classifying Rocky as a sports movie is concerned (even though I objected to Jerry Maguire on the basis that it was much more about peripheral issues than it was about sports).

Above all, Rocky is about a guy who becomes something much more than he was when the story began. And in a sense, that's what all good sports movies are about the Bad News Bears (#18) become more than an island of misfit toys. Roy Hobbs (#5) goes from being a never-was to the best there ever was for a year. The Hickory Huskers (#4) go from hicktown losers to David killing Goliath. And so on.

Courting Adrian is a part of Rocky's transformation from two bit legbreaker and loser to the guy who inspires a nation. Their relationship parallels the fight with Creed. He starts off a little slow, but he keeps going until the end. Winning her heart is one of the things which elevate Rocky from that dockyard thug that tried to fight Gazzo's driver.