Also Also

Congrats to the Portland Pilots!

I'm a little late in offering the now well-known news that the UP women's soccer team has won the national championship for the second time in four years. I watched much of the Penn State game on Friday, and a fair bit of the final's second half--but I fell in love with their style of play against a very good Notre Dame team last week. It is collegiate soccer no doubt, with more frantic clears and mis-hit passes than either the pros or the international game, but the Pilots are as talented an assemblage of amateur soccer players as I've ever seen.

They work so well together, particularly IMO on defense (although their offense was devastating this year, led by Christine Sinclair). Time and time again over the last two weeks it seemed that opposing attackers began to approach the penalty area and discovered that they had run out of options. Opponents rarely made clean breaks to the wings in order to serve an unmolested cross into the box, and on that cross no one inside the box found themselves without a marker. And if they did happen to get a shot off, Cori Alexander made the critical stop with an aggressive leap or a full extension dive. They really do play high quality soccer, and in a game with only a few climaxes of play, the flow of play is perhaps more important for entertainment than in any other sport. If you've got a crappy game of soccer, the lack of goals makes it seem all the worse.

The Oregonian did a pretty good job of catching the zeitgeist this morning, at least having the sense to splash it on the front page and across the full top fold of the sports page. They also put together a couple of nice sidebar articles  (see the items in the link marked parts 1, 2, 3), but as usual the one from the print version that I want to share with you is nowhere to be found.

When I came back to Portland in 2002, it was the last year of Clive Charles' coaching career, and also his life. He died before the season began in 2003. I went to the Portland Building to see them place the trophy in a temporary display--me and about 10 other non UP, non media persons. (I suspect a few more will show up at Pioneer Square on Friday). I knew who Charles was, but in person he was larger than life. It was clear the players idolized him not just as a coach but as a personal guide and mentor. I thanked him for his contributions to the city and soccer, and he thanked me in a quiet but direct voice. It was obvious he was sick, but he couldn't have looked more pleased to speak to me or anyone.

And this article that remains hidden in The O's ether was testament to the lasting effects of Charles' legacy, both professionally and personally. Alexander did not know Clive, but speaks about how much he influence her life anyway. Senior Lindsey Huie has CMC tattooed on her foot, along with footprints to symbolize the mark he left on her. To read about how much everyone involved still included the memory of Charles in their celebrations was something I found very moving. It's always a revelation to discover people whose lives had that much power for others, and helps restore faith in the power of humanity during times when we can be forgiven for having lost so much of that faith. So to everyone involved with the Pilots' success, the highest congratulations and thanks for enriching our community. We're very proud.

--TJ

Mo Cheeks Gets the Shaft

Commissioner Randy Leonard writes a lovely tribute to fired Blazers coach Maurice Cheeks over at BlueOregon today,  remembering the "Natalie Gilbert Incident":

Out of the silent sea of humanity that stared down at Natalie strode Mo Cheeks. Purposefully, yet gently, he approached the young girl who by now had buried her humiliated face into the microphone. Undoubtedly dying a thousand deaths, she looked up to see the tall, kind man put his arm around her shoulder. With a smile and a comforting arm to support her, Mo turned with Natalie to the awkwardly silent crowd and picked up the song where Natalie left off.

The strength of Mo’s presence flushed out her fear, primed her fibrillating synapses and Natalie began to sing again. Mo Cheeks, because of his instinctive and compassionate presence of mind, saved the dignity of a child that parents throughout America wanted to reach through their television screens and rescue that night.

You can watch the video here; sourced in a bit of sad irony at the Blazers' own website.

I just watched it again, seeing the whole episode for the first time, and I was unexpectedly moved to tears.  How many things would Mo have had the right to be thinking about,  as he stood on the sideline waiting for a playoff game to start?  "Which of my pampered crybabies is going to pout about not getting the playing time he wants tonight?", perhaps--or maybe "who will I put in after Rasheed gets his 2nd technical?"

But when Gilbert started to look more lost and afraid than Trent Lott at an AME church barbecue, Mo was thinking "Someone's got to help that poor girl."

The reprobates, the terminally sullen, the zoologically sadistic, the profligately parsimonious--they all get to stay on as the Blazers' 2004-05 season swirls towards the bottom of the bowl. The guy with more class and honor than a team of  West Point All-Stars--he's at home looking for work. 

And maybe, as the Oregonian's John Canzano notes, he should be all the happier for that.

Good luck, Mo. Portland will miss you, and we're a lesser city without you.

Update 230pm 3/4--
In fairness, not everyone is sad to see Cheeks go, at least from a basketball perspective. Portland Trib exec editor Dwight Jaynes put his op-ed on today's cover, under the head "Memo to Mo: It's Your Fault." At fan forums around the Net, a casual review of the commentary seems to echo that sentiment in general--good guy, lousy coach. I am certainly not an expert on the NBA (the last time I was way into pro b-ball was when the Blazers and Bullets were winning championships), but it seems to me that Cheeks did just fine with quality talent, compiling a winning percentage over .600 in his first two years.

Problem was, the quality talent was tethered to--how shall I put this--a bunch of dickheads. The public rebelled despite the overall success, and the team began to purge itself of the ne'er do wells. The (somewhat) better behaved recent editions have failed to gel as a team, which isn't surprising considering the continual turnover. While notorious malcontent Rasheed Wallace was taking it to his old team and flashing a championship ring in postgame interviews,  at times he may have found himself unable to taunt his old teammates--because few of them were left.

To their credit, the Portland public seem fairly clear on the subject: they'd love a winner, but not if they have to be embarrassed about who was doing the winning. The one thing Mo Cheeks never did in his three and a half years in Portland, was embarrass the team or the city. 

--TJ

Fantasy Baseball Returns, Safely

Contrary to popular imagination, I do in fact read other sections of the paper beyond the front page. I like sports. Fantasy sports, even. I've been running a baseball league for five years, and have been playing for around 10.

Mostly under the radar,  MLB has spent the offseason applying the carrot and stick to licensees of its player databases, now owned by the league after the Player's Association sold/negotiated them away. (I can't think of a move much dumber than selling the rights to your own name and likeness, but these are guys on creatine and andro, remember).  There were a couple of issues that were interesting on an "abstract property" basis; essentially MLB likes to believe that it owns the numbers 0 through 9--as well as the decimal point, I suppose--arguing that because its players generate statistics, the league owns the publishing rights to those statistics. That argument has been going on for a while, with the results mostly favoring the right to publish the data as common information (like being able to post yesterday's high temp based on what you read in the paper, for instance).

So there was much trepidation in the fantasy community as to whether MLB sought to restrict licenses, either partially or in toto, thus forcing players to use the MLB.com-sanctioned game system. Who would get re-licensed? Who wouldn't? CDM Fantasy Sports, a mid-level company focused entirely on fantasy (as opposed to places like CBS, ESPN or Yahoo), was rumored to be one of those shut out by the league, and based on MLB's announcement yesterday of licensees, that's what happened--only one licensee from 2004 was not awarded a 2005 license, and since CDM is the only company to have  sued MLB for the right to use their stats, I imagine they're the "one."  Rotoblogger is staying on top of the issue about as well as anyone, noting that perhaps the door is not entirely closed on CDM just yet.

Today is Opening Day for MLB's game, and all of the big boys except ESPN appear to have opened theirs as well. I'm a bit of a nut when it comes to digital copyright and general intellectual property issues--I'm a firm believer in the utility and benefit of "copyleft" --so I'll be keeping an eye on the story if CDM continues with their suit.

--TJ