Sports Related Aneurysms

As a fan, sports often take us to the edge of our seats. When your favorite team is down by two points or a goal, and this is a must-win game to advance in the playoffs, then yes, it might be better just to close your eyes.

Now that we are in the thick of both the NBA and NHL playoffs, there is no shortage of stressful moments. Players are unfortunately being injured; teams are constantly facing elimination. And it all adds up to stomach ulcers and tears if we lose. There’s a reason sports fans refer to their team as “we.” The feeling of identification we have with our guys is important. Their highs are our highs, just as their lows can be our painful lows.

Often in the high stress situations, one player becomes the focus of attention--to the point where success or failure can depend on this one person. Over the course of many stressful moments in sports, I have tried to determine some of the more common pressure points. What are the most tense positions in sports? Or perhaps more accurately, who has the most potentially aggravating?

Now, I can only speculate on the stress of athletes themselves. I logged 5 career points in high school basketball (including some AAU play), and I batted somewhere around .212 in baseball. Needless to say, I was not called upon often in stressful situations. But I am more than qualified to talk about the impact on the fans, with over 20 years of experience, predominantly with teams from Detroit, which I think earns me some bonus points.

ANYWAY, here is a list of some of what I consider the most terrifying positions in sports, in no particular order. If any of these positions cause near as much strain as we feel, then I can’t help but feel for them. Unless they play for the other team.

The Placekicker - I’ll start with an easy one. Although the field goal is only worth three points, it’s hard to imagine a more isolated task in football than kicking one. For a sport in which there are so many players on the field at one time, and the action occurs within about three seconds for each play, kicking is about the only time where no one else is watching anything. So much so, that the strategy known as “icing the kicker” involves taking timeouts only to increase the pressure of the moment. Regardless of the point value, I bet you can think of a few games your team has won or lost from a FG off the top of your head. After the fact, of course, the replay can decide that the snap was bad or the holder mishandled it, but in the moment, a missed kick is one person’s fault. And that can be all that matters.

The Putter - Here I am referring not to the golf club, but to the role of the golfer, the final and sometimes most difficult task of each hole. Experience has taught me that almost nothing is more elating on a golf course than watching a putt fall from fifteen or twenty feet out. Imagine how much that feeling would be multiplied if sinking that putt meant winning a major. Imagine also how crushing a missed putt would be. Just ask Doug Sanders or Scott Hoch. I also know from experience that there is no one more critical of your golf game than yourself when you are having a bad day. Just consider the amount of self-induced pressure when lining up a makeable putt. Which direction will it break? How hard should I hit it? Is there anything in the path? These and a thousand other questions are racing through a Tour golfer’s mind and the minds of the two hundred people crowded around the green staring at them. That kind of pressure would be unbelievable, and very well may be the most intense on this list.

The Free Throw Shooter - Possibly the most obvious example of stress in sports. All eyes are on one player as they take a shot. Pretty straightforward. Everyone likes to complain about free throws and how easy they are, usually with the witty comment, “They’re called free throws!” But free throws are not that automatic. Percentages made can range from the amazing (Steph Curry, 90.7%) to the atrocious (my Pistons’ Andre Drummond, 35.5%), but most are somewhere in the middle. Still, on average, players are going to miss one out of every four or five shots. Compound all the screaming and yelling at a player when they are at the line, and it’s a wonder they don’t miss more shots. Foul shots at the end of the game are especially stressful, of course, because they can decide the result. As fouls start to fly in the last 40 seconds of a game, half the people in the arena are hoping a player will miss the shot to keep it a one-point game, the other half are wishing the opposite to expand the lead. Simply making free throws--worth a measly one point--can be more than enough to win a game.

The Shootout Goalie - A shootout is to hockey as one-on-one is to basketball. Both the goalie and the shooter have exactly one goal in mind, and that goal is in direct opposition of the other. The skater has a lot of time to think about the strategy for scoring a goal. The goalie can only react to the play. I would like to know what goes through a goalie’s mind in the seconds leading up to a shot. Should they expect the fake? Or the backhand? Or is that too predictable? There’s a lot of time to second-guess yourself as a goalie. I can’t even stand to watch shootouts; it’s just too much for me. I also don’t like the shootout because it reduces everything that’s happened over the last 65 minutes down to just six shots that take about two minutes to complete. It feels anticlimactic and a bit like the rest of the game was wasted, but that’s neither here nor there.

The Closer - I saved this for last because a closer can be one of two people. A good closer can save a winning baseball game or he can be the single most aggravating part of a pitching staff. Closers, if you don’t know, are specific pitchers who enter at the start of the ninth inning with their team leading, ostensibly collect three outs, and save the game for their team. It sounds easy enough. But it isn’t always.

This is different from some of the other entries on this last because the stress of a closer’s final inning is not limited to just a moment, but rather a drawn-out series of minutes where every pitch could change the outcome of the game. And unlike the other athletes listed here, the entire stadium’s focus is not solely on the pitcher, but also on the batter--an equally stressful position--who could groove a hit in the gap or a home run into the stands.

Every baseball fan, without fail, has watched their closing pitcher give up a walk and a hit and, before they know it, their team has lost. And in that moment, it can feel like losing a World Series. There’s not many harder moments to endure than watching your team lead for a majority of the game only to throw it away in the final inning. It’s easy to blame the pitcher, but it’s not always fair.¹

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After looking at this list, some commonalities emerge. For one, they are of relatively lesser value than other aspects of their sports. By this, I mean literally one free throw is worth far less than a three-point shooter with a hot hand, or a putt is 15 feet compared to a 250 yard drive. Comparatively, it is easy to discount the little parts of games, but they truly do add up. The saying, “Free throws win games,” is not wrong. Secondly, most involve a stoppage of play, which adds to the anxiety levels. When play stops, all eyes are on the person responsible for the next action, such as the field goal kicker, and the ensuing result.

Finally, the people on this list are rarely the type of player you would categorize as the “star” of the team. Starting pitchers are in occasional stressful situations like a third inning jam or a no-hitter in the ninth inning. Quarterbacks might be under pressure to complete a pass to continue the last drive. But the typical face of the organization is not under such situational stress. This gives those on this list more of a heroic quality. Or it could set someone up for infamous failure. Either way, moments of stress in sports can become the stuff of legends.

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1 Permit me a brief discourse on Detroit Tigers’ closers. No one likes going through those stressful ninth innings, but the Tigers always seem to have a guy who does it. We went through a decade of Todd Jones (actually nicknamed the “Rollercoaster” because his outings were so up and down), Fernando Rodney, Jose Valverde, and Joe Nathan, where winning never felt like an absolute guarantee. To be sure, these guys mostly got results, each with at least one 30+ season. But I just don't understand why we have to worry so much going into the final inning. For me, it's almost like a Red Wings shootout. So my question is, how many other teams experience this with closers? 20%? Half? It can't be only happening to us. I know Cleveland has had their ups and downs in the 9th inning, for example. It just seems like, anecdotally, other closers are more or less a sure thing. There are reasons to expect this, I guess. We're inheriting closers who are more experienced (read: older), so they may be coming out of their prime. Also closing is really tough. I just remember when Joe Nathan would come out with Minnesota years ago: If we got to him, it felt like an anomaly, not the other way around.^↩

Writings from Solaris

High quality science fiction is not always easy to find. On occasion, I will pick up a book that looks intriguing, only to find that it includes the same tropes in all other sci-fi stories. It must be hard to generate innovative science fiction that doesn’t rely on the same story pitting humans against aliens, or something like that¹. Films and video games have the same problem--as if humans fighting aliens is the only concept left to explore in the scope of science fiction².

Eventually, you have to look to classic science fiction to fulfill this need for original stories. After some recommendation, I came across the brief, but impactful novel by Stanislaw Lem, Solaris. It was really an astounding read, set around a confounding planet that has futuristic scientists of Earth baffled, featuring an astronaut more or less trapped in orbit of the planet. Described as a philosophical science fiction novel, the reader experiences similar emotions to the astronaut--at times, he is comfortable with his surroundings despite only having studied and read about it; at other times, he is horrified with the effects the planet is having on himself and his fellow scientists.

Solaris (1961 novel) The novel is about an astronaut and psychologist named Kelvin who is sent to a distant planet after some disturbing and unclear messages are transmitted about bizarre happenings on the surrounding space station. It becomes apparent quickly, however, that the story is not about the characters, but the planet itself. Even after being studied for generations, very little is known about the planet. Specialized scientists, called Solarists, have come to the general agreement that the planet is not an object, but more of a conscious being. Being mostly liquid or plasma, the planet appears to respond to external influences, namely the attempts of the scientists to establish contact. Throughout the events, the planet does not come across as hostile; it is merely reactionary.

What the novel does well, among other things, is by giving a fair amount of description to the science surrounding the planet. The science does not feel invented or self-serving to the story. Instead it feels like the branch of study has been established and evolved over generations. The descriptions of the capabilities of the planet are feasible and realistic.

Shortly after arriving to the space station, Kelvin begins receiving a visitor from his past, who it becomes clear, is a creation by the planet based on his consciousness. The other scientists on the ship are dealing with similar apparitions; it has driven one man to suicide. The book chronicles how Kelvin along with his visitor grow together. It approaches a natural point where the two are questioning their own humanity, obviously a conundrum for a human and his apparition.

After finishing the novel, I knew I wanted to track down both film adaptations to see how they compared.

Solaris (1972 film) This is an excellent rendition of the original source material. Directed by the Russian visionary, Andrei Tarkovsky, the film is as much an art film as it is science fiction. It is long (almost three hours) and very sparse, with several scenes of Kelvin, solitary, taking in his natural surroundings. Garnering a Criterion Collection release, there are very few shots wasted, including a striking sequence where a car drives into Tokyo with the sound effects of a shuttle taking off. Interestingly, the author of the novel, Stanislaw Lem, was not pleased with the outcome of the film, as it took too many liberties from the novel. Tarkovsky plays with the effect of having little to no sound at times to demonstrate the isolation Kelvin sometimes feels both on Earth and on the space station. The film definitely does not rely on special effects (this was five years before Star Wars innovated upon flashy effects), but the depictions of the planet are no less striking. And while I do not want to give too much away, I will say the ending, the slow pan-out, must be seen to be believed.

Solaris (2002 film) The 2002 remake of the earlier film is not as good, though it is far from disappointing. It does accomplish much of the original message of the book, but there are some details added that detract from the story. Reported, James Cameron had wanted to make a new version of the film for some time, and he was able to produce it with the direction of Steven Soderbergh. Together these two filmmaking icons obviously brought their own styles to the story. The external shots of the planet are breathtaking--expect nothing less from a Cameron production. My issues with the film concern the extended sequences of George Clooney’s reminiscence of his time on Earth. Much shorter than the 1972 film, this version uses a lot of valuable screen time away from the space station. There was also an added twist to the story that seemed more akin to the modern, generic sci-fi tropes I mentioned earlier. It did little to add to the suspense and certainly was not necessary here. And the ending, while it attempted to recapture the classic film, personally did not have the same striking success.

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Probably the most powerful message from any of the versions is that the scientists are disrupting a planet that they truly do not understand. The planet is so incomprehensible that its “motives” could be almost anything. It could be trying to establish benevolent contact by providing an image of loved ones; or it could be attempting to drive the scientists to madness, and thus away from continually studying it. Again, while there is never a sense of hostility from the planet, there is almost always a sense of unease. We know there is something wrong with the “visitors” but, like Kelvin, we feel strangely comfortable with it. The dangers in the story do not feel as if they are caused by the environment, but rather at a psychological level. And all three tellings of the story capture this sense, in different ways. Essentially, however you go about this story, in whichever order, it is an enjoyable and thought-provoking experience.

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1 This is not to say this type of story always fails. War of the Worlds is a classic novel, and Aliens is one of my favorite movies.^↩
2 Substitute dragons and orcs for aliens, and the same holds true for fantasy. Simply having epic wars of mythical beings is not the key to quality fantasy. Finding good fantasy is often difficult, as well.^↩

The Slowest Month for Sports

Now that the Super Bowl is over, we are left with a fairly dismal month in the world of sports. There is something a little empty feeling about not having football every weekend--college or professional. The NHL and the NBA are just far enough from their playoffs that teams are not quite being eliminated or saved on a nightly basis. The excruciatingly long time of the MLB preseason is slowly beginning. Even college basketball is in a bit of a lull, before the excitement of March.

Of course, all this changes very quickly. In one month’s time, we have hockey and basketball teams fighting for that last playoff spot. The NCAA basketball tournament is a blinding display of constantly exciting games. The Masters and WrestleMania are approaching. Baseball teams are beginning to take shape and resemble what they will be on Opening Day. Basically, we have an exciting month and half of sports, but first we have to wade through the drudgeries of February.

So, now would be a good time to look ahead to the future season(s) of your teams, an opportunity which I will take now. Apologies to most people, but this will be a Detroit-centric discussion. You’ll have to indulge me. They are in rough order based on their upcoming championship opportunities. Let’s get started!

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Dayton Flyers men’s basketball This team is good. Having been in and out of the top-25 rankings (19th at the highest, heretofore), they are finally starting to play well with a bit more national attention. They are winning games they are supposed to win, and in most cases, by an notable margin. Their losses have not been pretty, but at least they’ve been few. Barring a major collapse, they should garner at least an 8-seed in the tournament. I’m just hoping to eventually get out of the black hole of the Atlantic 10. After top-tier teams abandoned the conference, Dayton’s wins have been much less impressive. I, for one, would like to go through a few games in the tournament without being called the “Cinderella team.”

WrestleMania To make the month of February even worse, we had to say goodbye to Daniel Bryan, a wrestler that you could not help but like. There was not a dry eye in Seattle on the night he announced his retirement. Otherwise, it’s the best time of the year to be a fan of professional wrestling. I like the look of the matchups for Fastlane coming up later this month, but I am dreading the possibility of Dean Ambrose turning heel.

The Masters All eyes will, of course, be on the young sensation, Jordan Spieth. Number one in the world and defending his crisp Green Jacket from last year’s Masters, I can’t wait to see what he does this year. At 22 and with two majors already, he also has the tantalizing chance to pursue Jack Nicklaus’ record 18 championships. I feel like he could add one or two more in 2016. The player I’ve been most impressed with early this season has been Brandt Snedeker. With one win and three top-3 placings so far, he’s been consistently showing up at or near the top of the field. Unfortunately, I have concerns about Rory McIlroy. He’s only missing the Masters to complete the set of majors, but he dealt with an injury and a slow 2015 following wins in the 2014 British Open and PGA Championship.

Detroit Red Wings The Red Wings have been in the NHL playoffs every year since 1991. I worry about this streak every single year, to some degree. After some trepidation, I’m more and more confident this team will make the playoffs this year. Dylan Larkin has a viable shot at winning Rookie-of-the-Year, and Petr Mrazek has a terrific record of 21 wins in 37 games with a Goals Against Average under 2. Despite the extremely tight Eastern Conference standings, even a .500 record should be enough to secure a spot in the playoffs.

Detroit Pistons As confident as I am about the Red Wings, I’m cooling on the Pistons. Losing the best offensive player on the team in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has been a huge blow, as the team has dropped 4 of the 5 games he’s missed. There are solid players to cover the holes he has left, but they’re falling just a bit short of late. Andre Drummond is clinging to the most rebounds in the league, but even he has slipped a bit. A bright spot? It’s not going to take much more than 45 wins to get a spot in the East, which is quite doable. Another bright spot? KC-P is expected to be back this month.

Detroit Tigers This is probably the team I am most excited about this year (read: every year). The baseball offseason is always the longest, isn’t it? And spring practices and training is so torturously long leading up to the regular season. In any case, I went from being lukewarm on the team this year to all in after the trade securing Justin Upton. He improved an average to below-average outfield and added yet another dangerous bat to the lineup. The sometimes dismal bullpen shed some dead weight, and added a closer who might not murder fans out of stress each and every night (although I’ve thought that every year for a decade now). I recognize that my optimism is a result of fandom, but I think the Tigers have a legitimate shot of contending for the Central, and possibly the American League.

Detroit Lions As usual, I have no idea what to expect from this team next year. It’s too early to tell with the combine and the draft right around the corner. I will say that so far this offseason has not been altogether positive, seemingly losing more players than we’ve gained, most notably future HOFer Calvin Johnson. The already-lacking offense will take a hit, but the Lions will likely be drafting a defender with their 16th pick. At this point, we have to wait and see how the draft shakes out for any further speculation.

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Again, if you’re not a fan of any of these teams, I can’t believe you made it this far. Instead, I encourage you to reflect on your own teams and sports, and try to get through this dull month in good spirits. Cheers!

On David Bowie

Losing David Bowie was tough. Just a cursory browse of the Internet in the days following the king of glam rock’s passing revealed this. So many rumors of his death and false obituaries over the past decade had made this seem like an impossibility. There was an outpouring of people expressing how difficult it is to lose him or how lucky we were to live through his creative output. Even now, weeks after his death, I can turn to a music website and see a new retrospective about his career. And you know what, regardless of how many I’ve already seen, I’ll probably read it. He truly was an incredible artist.

Because of all the existing eulogies, there’s nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said. Like most people, I spent the last few weeks consuming Bowie albums. The diversity from album to album is just astounding. Two albums from the same decade may not even sound like they were from the same person. Luckily for future generations of listeners, each iteration of Bowie has been influential on a different generation of artists, from grunge to electronic to punk and so on. What other artists have this same distinction? Sounding wholly different over their life, while still maintaining the quality of his music? That’s the bewildering part about David Bowie: his reinventions rarely sounded like missteps.

Take, for example, his 1971 album, Hunky Dory. This was an album, that could very nearly be considered folk rock, in a way that probably shaped part of Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, especially after he called Dylan by name in one of the songs on the album. At the same time, it heralded some powerful anthem rock songs. In fact, few of his albums could be considered more diverse than this one. The very next year, he puts out Ziggy Stardust. As a space rock epic dripping with glam rock theatricality, it could not be more different from his previous album. This is one example of many where Bowie was simply light-years ahead of his time. Are we sure he was human?

The song, “Under Pressure,” is particularly special. When, in the history of music, have two more eccentric AND popular musicians performed together? The question is rhetorical; the answer is never. Queen’s Freddie Mercury--possibly the single most exciting performer ever--working with David Bowie is a musical team we will likely never see matched. Two icons in their showmanship as well as their sexuality, performing near the height of their careers. I can honestly not think of another combination of artists that would have been so impactful together¹. It is tragic that they never performed the song live together.

Bowie continued to surprise right up to his death. With his new album, Blackstar, he again sounded like a different person. I freely admit that the album as a whole will take some getting used to for me; I didn’t immediately take to it as others have. As with his earlier albums, it takes several listens to get accustomed to the sound he demonstrates. But there are certainly some individual tracks which stand out and highlight Bowie’s prowess as a songwriter.

It is interesting to mourn the loss of a person you have never met². Not wrong, of course, just a little absurd. Such is the personal nature of music that some musicians really do command that sense that you actually know the person. In this way, the death of musicians--especially those with long and full careers--can feel particularly shocking. Michael Jackson stunned the world a few years ago; more recently, Lou Reed had a similar effect on a lot of people, myself included³. It is only fitting that David Bowie, who had the capability to be shocking in his life, could shock people with his death. Take care, Starman.

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1 I’m not speaking hyperbolically here; the closest I can come is Jay-Z and Kanye working together, and even that doesn’t have the same level of importance.↩
2 Bowie’s death was also days before losing Alan Rickman. It’s been a hard month.↩
3 Lemmy died a month ago, and I just read that Glenn Frey passed away this week. Motörhead and Eagles fans can certainly relate.↩

As Solid as Ever

There is a pantheon of franchises in the world of video games that can only be considered iconic. In a world of popular culture where we are seemingly obsessed with series¹, consumers are always looking forward to the next entry in the set. With video games, players are always eager to try the new Mario or Zelda or Final Fantasy or Halo. The consistency for these games have endeared them in video game history.

In any type of popular media, franchises are significant, and they deserve to be. There is a reason a series becomes popular and remains relevant. Part of what make game franchises important is that they are somewhat genre-defining. They initially popularize the genre, and then tweak and improve it with each iteration. The two-dimensional, side-scrolling platformer does not exist as it is today without the first Super Mario Bros. StarCraft shaped the way we know real-time strategies. Together, Metroid and Castlevania literally named a certain style of games, “metroidvania.” Basically any genre of video game can be traced to one or two franchises that are still pervasive today. Such games may not have invented the genre, but they propelled them into popularity enough that they can continue making games in the series today. This is what Metal Gear Solid did for the stealth game.

To tell the truth, before this fall, I had never really played through any stealth game properly, much less a Metal Gear game. I couldn’t play Thief, and I barely made it out of the training level of Splinter Cell. I even had issues with some parts of Dishonored, a stealth-lite game. I just couldn’t get the hang of it. I’m not patient enough to plan out events and bide my time in a video game, and when something goes wrong, I don’t like to painstakingly retrace my steps to get back to the same point. Needless to say, I thought I was in for more of the same when I bought the complete collection of Metal Gear Solid games.

Why did I make such a purchase if I was fairly certain that I would not enjoy myself? The long answer is that the newest entry to the series (The Phantom Pain²) had just come out and was receiving rave reviews for being more accessible than previous games as well as just being incredibly bizarre. There was also the possibility of this being the final game in the series. This, coupled with the long time between releases in the series, meant that the zeitgeist for Metal Gear games was palpable. I wanted to experience the fascinating series that people seem to either love or hate, and I wanted to start at the beginning. The short answer is I’m just not smart with money.

In any case, I purchased the collection knowing full well that I might just hate it. I figured I would turn it on, not be able to make it out of the first zone and never try it again. Then a few years later, I would try one of the later games to see if that was any better. And that’s okay, I still had to see what the game was like. I wanted to see what all the buzz was about and be able to tell myself that at least I tried it, and I had at least a passing, academic understanding of it. I could never have guessed how wrong I would be.

I downloaded 1998’s Metal Gear Solid and sat down to play, essentially going in blind. I knew some characters’ names, but that was really about it. Immediately, the opening cutscenes began to draw me in. It’s difficult to explain, but the opening sequence seems both ludicrous and believable at the same time. It’s done with a level of self-seriousness that is really hard not to like. It’s hard to be so stupid and so deep at the same time. This is not supposed to sound like criticism; the opening sequence (and any of the ensuing cutscenes) is highly amusing. The game’s not dumb, just extremely ridiculous.

I expected to have some issues with the controls. The game is old, so the movements are a bit unrefined. It was definitely jarring at first to use the directional pad for movement³ and to press Circle to start⁴. But it did not take me long at all to grow accustomed to the obscure movements. It got to the point that when I used a thumbstick to play another game, it felt strange.

To some extent, I also expected to be stymied by the game’s puzzles. With older games, there is commonly a less-is-more approach to instruction as to what to do or where to go. And I have the unfortunate tendency to get easily frustrated when I cannot figure out the next step. For whatever reason, though, I had no issues. The game provides references to call that provide numerous helpful hints. In this way, it is impossible to be stuck for too long in one area. Longer fights against major enemies also provided enough of a challenge without being impossible.

Finally, I fully accepted the gimmicks of the game that I could only characterize as ‘zany,’ even if I was already somewhat aware of them. The best examples of these comes in one longer sequence against a certain character (I’ll speak delicately, even though you must know the tricks by now). Without giving too much away, in the scene, a character reads the player’s thoughts, the TV screen goes black, and the controller moves of its own accord. I was all in.

It’s weird to speak so highly about a game that was released so long ago. I have come to learn what many other players already knew:  Metal Gear Solid is a sublime game. Beyond appreciating the significance as one of the most popular games on the original Playstation, I legitimately enjoyed every minute I spent with it. There are only a handful of times I can recall feeling better about a game throughout the entirety of it. I can’t wait to move on with the rest of the series.⁵

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1 Of the top ten grossing films of 2015, seven are parts of a multi-film franchise and one is a remake.↩
2 Interestingly, this pushes Star Wars: Episode One further down the list of things that begin with “The Phantom…” behind The Phantom Tollbooth and every form of the The Phantom of the Opera.↩
3 You may have known, the original Playstation controller did not have thumbsticks.↩
4 You may have known, traditionally Japanese games use Circle instead of the Cross or “X” that we’re used to.↩
5 Upon finishing the first game, I immediately played through the short prologue to the newest game, 2014’s Ground Zeroes. I liked it, and I noticed some of the elements derivative of the first game, but it did not capture me in the same way the original did. Not enough to discourage me from the whole series, though.↩