American Justin Gatlin Breaks 100 Meter World Record

Justin Gatlin has set a new world record for the 100 meters, shaving 1/100th of a second of the old record.

Olympic champion Justin Gatlin broke the 100-meter world record Friday with a time of 9.76 seconds at the Qatar Grand Prix. The American sprinter lowered the mark of 9.77 seconds set by Jamaica’s Asafa Powell on June 14, 2005, in Athens, Greece.

Gatlin won the 100- and 200-meter titles at the world championships in Helsinki, Finland, last August. He said Monday he intended to break the record in Doha. Olusoji Fasuban of Nigeria finished second Friday in 9.84 seconds, with Shawn Crawford of the United States third in 10.08. Gatlin and Powell ran 9.95s in separate races last weekend and will face each other at the Gateshead meet in England on June 11.

When Powell set the record last year, he bettered the mark of 9.79 set by Maurice Greene in Athens in June 1999. Tim Montgomery’s mark of 9.78, set in Paris in 2002, was wiped off the books after he was banned for two years in the BALCO doping scandal. Previous recent 100-meter record-hrolders included Donovan Bailey (9.84), Leroy Burrell (9.85) and Carl Lewis (9.86).

Timing races down to the 100th or even 1000th of a second seems bizarre, let alone keeping records at that level. Still, that the record has fallen 1/10th of a second since Carl Lewis’ day is meaningful. That two people in today’s race beat that record is especially noteworthy–an indication of the inexorable progress of athletes over time.

Pittsburgh Sports Fan in Non-Football Season

Its hard being a Pittsburgh sports fan when football is done – the only thing we had going for us was college hoops, and that was a while back. If you wondered why I haven’t posted in a while, that’s the main reason: nothing of note happening in Pittsburgh – an offseason of few surprises for the Steelers, and nothing happening at all on other fronts.

The Bucs are, as usual, stinking up the joint. Here’s a sampling of the headlines in the Pirates section of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s website:

Execution absent in Pirates hitters
First things first for Bucs
With Pirates, it’s hit or miss
Slumping Bay may slide in lineup
Bullpen lets down Pirates
Perez gets another shot to turn season around

Not the types of headlines you get from a successful team – at least, you don’t get THAT MANY negative headlines with a good team (unless you are the Yankees or the Mets).

This year we were told that the pitching would be good, we had Jason Bay who was decent, and this could be the year that we break .500. Yes, I know, lofty goals, but you have to start somewhere.

The last time the Pirates were good, the Braves beat them in 7, back in 1992. With apologies to James (I hate both the Braves and Cowboys, go figure), I’ll never forgive them for that, and for not having a LOSING season since. Its just not fair. At least the Steelers won the Super Bowl. And I will still root for the Bucs, through thick and thin. I’m just getting tired of the thin part of that equation.

Hines Ward Goes To Korea

Hines Ward still basking in Super Bowl MVP glow.

“I’m sick of these Super Bowl commercials you see for Sports Illustrated,” Ward said yesterday, smiling widely for a man so ill from seeing himself on TV. “Everywhere I go, in a bar, people look up, they look at me, they look up, they look at me: ‘Hey, that’s Hines!’

“They have the camera phone. They’re right here in your face. I’m like oh, geez, I can’t do anything.”

Then, the thought hits him.

“Hey, Peyton Manning isn’t doing that now.”

This coming from a man who is ALWAYS smiling, really.

Also, his trip to Korea could be a REALLY good thing for racial relations in that country:

In his wildest dreams, back to his days as a schoolboy, Ward never thought it would feel so good to win a Super Bowl. He also never dreamed he could use the game and his newfound celebrity as a platform to promote societal change in an entire country. His April visit to South Korea, scheduled long before the Super Bowl, was to be a quiet trip where his mother could introduce him to the land where he was born.

Then came the Steelers victory against Seattle and Ward’s Super Bowl MVP award, and he became Korea’s rock star. There, he discovered disturbing racism. He wants to seize the moment to help kids like himself, biracial, who are shunned, often officially, in that country.

“Because of the way the society views biracial kids, you can’t get a job, nobody’s going to accept you,” said Ward, the son of a Korean mother and an African-American father who was stationed there. “If you do play athletics, your teammates treat you like [dirt]. For kids, me being over there helped provide a sense of hope. If I can do anything, as far as using my status, my accolades to help give them an opportunity, hopefully society will change its views.”

I speak from second hand experience when I say that this uglier aspect of Korean society is real. I know an engaged couple who put their engagement on hold for many years because of the objection of the Korean father for precisely this reason. I hope that Ward and others can contribute toward a change here.

NFL Going to Faster, Smaller Linebackers

John Clayton believes the popularity of Tony Dungy’s “Cover 2″ defense is fueling a trend toward smaller, faster linebackers.

An interesting evolution is happening at the outside linebacker position.

Thirteen of the 25 teams playing 4-3 defenses made moves to acquire weakside linebackers this offseason. Much of the change relates to the popularity of Tony Dungy’s Cover 2 defense, which asks for more speed and playmaking ability from defenders. The entire NFC North, which features three new head coaches, is going to the Cover 2 to keep up with Bears coach Lovie Smith, a Dungy disciple while an assistant at Tampa Bay.

[...]

“The Tampa 2 enables a team to play with seven defenders in the box and be able to play coverage,” Reese said. “It becomes demanding because the linebackers have to have speed to help with the coverage. When you hear people talking about needing more speed on defense, they start at linebacker, and that usually means the weakside linebacker position.”

Dungy’s defense is revolutionizing the league because it’s allowing coaches to use personnel in a variety of ways. A big college safety can put on a few pounds and be a weakside linebacker. The Colts won 14 games last season with a 5-11, 235-pound middle linebacker, Gary Brackett.

And the evolution isn’t stopping at linebacker. Weakside linebacker bodies are taking over the strongside position. Those 6-4, 255-pound strongside linebackers are getting a try at defensive end if they have the quickness to get to the quarterback. Dungy is taking some 265- to 275-pound defensive ends and putting them at tackle to take advantage of their quickness. Dungy, like Bill Belichick and others, has turned cornerbacks into safeties and switched them back when necessary.

NFL defenses are geared more toward speed, and the pace is quickening. When in doubt, teams will draft a quick defender ahead of an offensive skill player because speedy defenders are harder to find as the draft proceeds. Still, the weakside linebacker position is the gateway to beginning the process of overhauling a slow defense.

If that weakside linebacker is slow, he better move to the strong side. And if he’s still too slow at strongside linebacker, he better move off the field.

[...]

Whether it’s weak side or strong side, the evolution at linebacker has everything to do with speed, and in reality those positions are becoming interchangeable. It won’t be long before moving to the strong side will be considered a sign that a player is losing a step because of the extra speed required on the weak side. But, eventually, offenses will adjust to the increasing speed and smaller defensive bodies running around.

“Eventually, teams will line up in two-tight-end sets and pound the ball with the running game,” Reese said.

Until then, enjoy the speed.

Interestingly, the Cowboys are making that move on offense while going in the opposite direction on defense, going for behemoth linebackers and letting guys like Dexter Coakley go elsewhere. It’s also amusing that Dungy gets the credit for the move to fast linebackers, since Jimmy Johnson built a championship dynasty in the early 1990s around that idea.

Floyd Patterson, Former Heavyweight Champ, Dies at 71

Floyd Patterson, who came back from an embarrassing loss to become the first boxer to regain the heavyweight title, died Thursday. He was 71. Patterson died at his home. He had Alzheimer’s disease for about eight years and prostate cancer, nephew Sherman Patterson said.

Patterson’s career was marked by historic highs and humiliating lows. He emerged from a troubled childhood in Brooklyn to win the Olympic middleweight championship in 1952. In 1956, the undersized heavyweight became at age 21 the youngest man to win the title with a fifth-round knockout of Archie Moore. But three years later, Patterson was knocked down seven times in the third round in losing the title to Ingemar Johansson at the Polo Grounds in New York City.

Patterson returned with a vengeance at the same site in 1960, knocking out Johansson with a tremendous left hook to retake the title. “They said I was the fighter who got knocked down the most, but I also got up the most,” Patterson said later.

Despite his accomplishment, he was so humiliated when he lost the title on a first-round knockout to Sonny Liston in 1962 that he left Comiskey Park in Chicago wearing dark glasses and a fake beard. Patterson again was knocked out in the first round by Liston in 1963.

Patterson got two more shots at winning the title a third time. Battered and taunted for most of the fight by Muhammad Ali, Patterson was stopped in the 12th round in 1965. He lost a disputed 15-round decision to WBA champion Jimmy Ellis in 1968.

Overall, Patterson finished 55-8-1 with 40 knockouts. He was knocked out five times and knocked down a total of at least 15 times. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1991.

After retiring in 1972, Patterson remained close to the sport. He served twice as chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission.

Patterson retired right before I became aware of the sport.

Bill Jempty has thoughts on his passing.

Jimmy Smith Retires

Jimmy Smith, who became one of the NFL’s star receivers after some early character issues, is retiring.

Jimmy Smith, one of the most prolific receivers in NFL history, has decided to retire. Smith, a five-time Pro Bowl selection who overcame several health problems and a drug addiction during his 13 seasons, scheduled a news conference Thursday with the Jacksonville Jaguars to announce the decision. His retirement was first reported by FoxSports.com.

The 37-year-old receiver led the Jags with 70 catches for 1,023 yards and six touchdowns last season. He ranks seventh in NFL history with 862 receptions and 11th in receiving yards. He has more receptions than every receiver in the Hall of Fame, and only Marvin Harrison has more catches and yards receiving than Smith since 1996.

Smith contemplated retirement during the offseason, but Jaguars coach Jack Del Rio asked him to take his time and be sure he was making the right choice. His announcement came a day before the team opened a three-day minicamp.

Smith’s longevity was surprising – even to him – especially considering what he overcame. In 2001, he had three operations to remove scar tissue from his abdomen. Some questioned whether he would play again, but he caught 112 passes for 1,373 yards – despite being arrested in November that year for suspicion of drunken driving. Tests later revealed he had cocaine in his system. He vehemently denied using the drug. He was suspended for the first four games of the 2003 season for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy. He then publicly acknowledged an addiction and spent several weeks in rehab.

He had other issues early in his career, too. The third receiver selected in the 1992 draft behind Desmond Howard and Carl Pickens, Smith broke his leg and missed most of his rookie season. In 1993, he needed an emergency appendectomy and suffered through infection and stomach problems. He missed the entire year. He didn’t play in 1994, either, after getting cut by Dallas and Philadelphia.

As a Cowboys fan, it still grates on me that he didn’t get his act together while he was still on our roster. The team might have won another Super Bowl or two if it had a receiver of his caliber alongside Michael Irvin.

Major Leagues to Swing Pink Bats for Mother’s Day

Major League Baseball is breaking out the pink bats for Mother’s Day.

Hulking Jim Thome. Rugged Manny Ramirez. Brawny Adam Dunn. “The thought of these big macho men, swinging pink bats to help women with breast cancer … what a novel idea,” Louisville Slugger president John Hillerich said Tuesday. Major League Baseball granted special permission for players to use the colorful bats – baby pink, at that – for Mother’s Day. They’re part of a weeklong program to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Derek Jeter, David Eckstein and Marcus Giles are among dozens of players who intend to try them Sunday. This is the first time pink has been approved for bats – dyed at the Louisville Slugger factory, they’re usually black, brown, reddish or white.

Kevin Mench was among several Texas players who wanted their mother’s names burned on the bats. The Rangers slugger, who homered in seven straight games earlier this season, also planned to have a bat for his grandmother, who died from breast cancer. “My mom is the glue of our family, and I just want to do something to thank her for all that she has done,” Mench said before Tuesday night’s game against Minnesota. “At the same time, we are raising money for a great cause.”

[...]

Along with the pink bats, players and all on-field personnel will wear pink wristbands and a pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness on their uniforms. The pink ribbon logo will appear on the bases and on commemorative home plates, and the lineups will be written on pink cards. The bats, along with the home plates and lineup cards, will be autographed by the teams and will be auctioned off later with the proceeds going to the Breast Cancer Foundation.

A nice gesture, to be sure.

Still, I always have the same questions about these things: Does MLB favor breast cancer every other day? And what about the diseases/causes whose logos they aren’t wearing?

Further, presuming symbolism actually matters, why breast cancer? It’s sufficiently ubiquitous that you’d have to be a dolt not to be aware of it. No one that I’m aware of opposes finding a cure for it. Why not use the media spotlight of MLB to highlight a less celebrated cause?

Update: Aaron Brazell is troubled by the idea of “Barry Bonds breaking the Babe’s homerun record using a pink bat.”

Update: Jeff Vreeland asks, “Are we going to have Blue Bases for Prostate Cancer on Father’s Day?” They’d better, unless they want to send the message that they hate men and want them to die.

OTB

Mocking Barry Bonds

Tom Verducci has a rather maudlin piece about what it must be like to be Barry Bonds right now.

Hey Barry. Move Your Head. We Can’t See.

The signs, including that one in the left-field seats, were so prevalent in Philadelphia last weekend that Barry Bonds’ pursuit of the greatest record in sports has become embarrassing and awkward for baseball. Bonds can have his home runs, his “wiping out” of Babe Ruth, as he promised five years ago, and even The Big One — the record Hank Aaron has held with 755 career home runs — but real legitimacy and honor never shall be his. So what then would he really have? The mocking of Bonds and his ill-gotten home run total was so savage I wonder if any such great and accomplished athlete was treated so harshly in his twilight.

Seeing Barry Hit 715: Worthless.

Bonds chasing Ruth and Aaron was bound to be a missed opportunity for baseball, what with the moral issues clouding the athlete achievement and dampening the celebration. But I did not expect it to be this negative, this sad. It is worse than joyless, what with Bonds treated so rudely and being a mope himself.

While Bonds has surely brought much of this on himself, not only with his apparent use of steroids but with his arrogant attitude, the fact remains that he’s the most spectacular baseball player of the last generation, if not all time. It’s amazing that people paying to see a baseball game are focused more on the sideshow than catching a last glimpse of an iconic figure as his career winds down.

NFL Now an International League

Len Pasquereli notes how much the NFL has internationalized during the reign of commissioner Paul Tagliabue. Noting the creation of NFL Europe and the playing of preseason and even a regular season game abroad, the game has attracted international interest. And players.

As the Tagliabue Era winds down, the NFL still isn’t as global a professional sports entity as, say, the NBA, and might never be. But the advances made in recent years certainly have been encouraging. And as last weekend’s draft demonstrated, although the NFL isn’t yet a league of nations, a lot more nations are sending players to the league.

[...]

Consider the most memorable moment of Super Bowl XL three months ago: On the touchdown play that secured a fifth Vince Lombardi Trophy for the Pittsburgh Steelers, a white quarterback born and raised in Middle America and drafted in the first round (Ben Roethlisberger) handed off to a black tailback from a small town in North Carolina who made the roster as a free agent (Willie Parker). He reversed the ball to a player with a Muslim-sounding surname but who was raised in the Pentecostal faith (Antwaan Randle El), who then threw it to a wide receiver born in Seoul, South Korea, (Hines Ward) to parents of mixed races, for a game-clinching 43-yard hookup.

It was, for sure, a kaleidoscope moment for the league. And it was the kind of snippet of diversity that, if the 2006 draft class is any indication, will occur far more frequently in the future as the NFL continues to be further infused and enhanced with players from interesting, intriguing and unusual backgrounds.

“In most places around the world, it’s still called ‘American football,’ but that doesn’t mean every player has to come from America, does it?” said former Stanford defensive tackle Babatunde Oshinowo, chosen by the Cleveland Browns in the sixth round on Sunday and one of several players of Nigerian ancestry among the 255 prospects selected.

There was a time when the most exotic locales from which the league gleaned players were Hawaii or American Samoa, but that isn’t the case anymore. There were 80 foreign-born players, from venues as disparate as Ghana and Ukraine, in NFL training camps last year. Fueled in part by the 2006 draft, there are likely to be even more this summer.

Last weekend’s first round alone brought in players of Tongan (defensive tackle Haloti Ngata of Baltimore), Liberian (defensive end Tamba Hali of Kansas City), Haitian (Joseph) and Ugandan (New York Giants’ defensive end Mathias Kiwanuka) descent. Later rounds added players whose roots can be traced to Nigeria, Senegal and the Virgin Islands. Among the undrafted free agents signed this week by teams trying to fill out camp rosters were prospects born in Germany and Finland.

“It’s a pretty big world out there,” said Green Bay second-round linebacker Abdul Hodge, a former Iowa star born in the Virgin Islands. “I’m sure there are players under a lot of rocks, but the rocks just don’t get turned over in some places. But lately, yeah, it seems like that’s changed a little.”
[...]

The truth is, too, that the influx of prospects to the NFL from countries such as Nigeria isn’t exactly the way visionary Tagliabue and league owners drew up the game plan. In introducing its game overseas, the NFL focused much more on Western Europe and, to a lesser extent, the Far East. The goal, particularly in Europe, was to develop interest in the game at the grassroots level and, perhaps in time, to develop a few viable player prospects, as well. The big-picture pursuit, though, in exposing a new part of the world to the NFL product was in marketing.

Open some key European nations to American football, the rationale went, and newly minted fans would open their wallets to buy NFL-licensed paraphernalia. That certainly has been the case in Germany, where five of the six NFL Europe franchises are located, and where the game is popular in part because of the number of American servicemen there. In fact, on Thursday, Tagliabue huddled with Angela Merkel, the country’s first female chancellor.

But a strange thing occurred as the NFL unrolled its global blueprint: On the way to the league’s striking the potential financial windfall, as it exported its game, a burgeoning number of players born in untraditional places or with unlikely football ancestries were being imported by the league’s franchises. And although there probably aren’t many kids in Lagos, Nigeria, or Kampala, Uganda, sporting NFL-licensed T-shirts, they might know more about the league as a result of the 2006 draft.

Third World countries probably don’t rate high with league souvenirs peddlers, but that hasn’t kept some countries where the NFL is still just a curiosity item from churning out first-rate football prospects. Since coaches are more even more preoccupied with fretting about where to locate a pass-rushing defensive end than they are with dollars and cents, the league gains an advantage on the field and off. “It accelerates the process of introducing our game, and educating people about it when you have players from foreign countries coming into the league,” said Pete Abitante, the NFL senior director of international public affairs. “Even in countries where perhaps you don’t really have the apparatus in place to build the game from the ground up, the exposure those players give us is beneficial. … It’s a good story.”

Few stories leading up to the draft were as riveting as the tales of some of the prospects of African descent. Hali, the former Penn State star chosen by the Chiefs with the 20th overall selection, spoke many times of leaving war-torn Liberia with his father when he was only 10 years old, escaping the country after rebels attacked his family’s village many times. His mother and sister remain behind in Liberia, and Hali, who has filed paperwork to begin the process toward American citizenship, speaks to them weekly by cell phone. He hopes to use part of his signing bonus to bring them to the United States. “My mother, when I explain to her about football and how it’s played, she tells me to be careful, to protect myself,” Hali said. “Pretty ironic, huh? I mean, I was old enough to see some [horrible] things. I remember the gunfire, bodies piled up, that kind of stuff. Just coming to [America] was like a dream come true. Then, learning about football, being good enough to earn an education doing something I enjoy, and the chance now to make a good living … it’s pretty mind-boggling.”

The final player chosen in the first round, Kiwanuka is the grandson of Uganda’s first prime minister, a man assassinated in 1972, long before Mathias was born, by Idi Amin followers. Although born in this country, Kiwanuka has visited Uganda once and hopes to return. He has a tattoo, the Ugandan presidential seal, across his back.

Former University of Indiana defensive end Victor Adeyanju, picked by the St. Louis Rams in the fourth round, is the son of a Nigerian immigrant who has driven a taxi in Chicago for three decades to support his large family. Adeyanju’s parents actually sent him and his five siblings to Nigeria for four years because of the poor conditions in which the family lived in Chicago. “It makes you appreciate,” Adeyanju said. “Appreciate a lot. And I think when you’ve seen really bad conditions, grown up in [adversity], or just heard from your parents about how different things are in other countries, you work a little harder. There’s a fear of maybe having to go back to those situations. It makes you hungrier to succeed. The players who come from those unusual backgrounds, you’re going to get an honest day’s effort from them, I think. “You hear about the league taking the game to other countries. Well, I feel like guys with backgrounds like some of the [foreign] players have, we bring something to the league.”