Sporting Madness

An omnipresent but under-discussed element of sports in our modern era is the significance of the story. We often tend to think of stories as just factual representations of what goes on in a game, but the sheer amount of action involved in sports means they have to be both more and less then that. A breakdown of every single play without any kind of cohesive narrative structure or context from the thoughts of players or coaches would accurately relate what went on, but it would be exceptionally long and tedious. Thus, we edit, and we try to relate what we saw in terms of some larger overall angle. This isn't just journalists or bloggers either, but every fan who talks about the game with their friends afterwards; the tendency is always to pick out certain aspects that struck you as the most important and build a cohesive framework of a story from them. This doesn't have to be a bad thing, as it creates much more interesting discussions than a dry blow-by-blow of every play, bu...

In the wake of his 60 Minutes interview on Sunday, Roger Clemens held a press conference Monday to repeat his denials of steroid use (alleged in George Mitchell's report earlier). The most interesting thing to come out of it was his playing of a (secretly) taped conversation between himself and former trainer Brian McNamee, which he thought would help his cause (aside: who knew that only one party to a conversation had to consent to taping it? Apparently New York and Texas have no problems with people acting like Richard Nixon ). As the Globe and Mail 's Jeff Blair reports , it actually may have hurt Clemens' case. Clemens shows his outrage at McNamee for telling Mitchell that he used steroids, but never actually accuses McNamee of lying (and McNamee never said he lied on the tape). As Stoeten points out over at Drunk Jays Fans , another interesting moment comes from McNamee's line, "The truth is the truth. It is what it is," which Clemens, not so shockin...

Well, the hammer dropped earlier this afternoon as former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell released his long-anticipated report . Contrary to Bob McCown's claim on Prime Time Sports a couple days ago, the report named far more than the dozen or so players he predicted. Several prominent players who there had been little prior conclusive evidence on were included in the report, including Roger Clemens, Eric Gagne, Miguel Tejada, and Andy Pettitte. On the Jays' side, important names included Troy Glaus (to no one's surprise) and Gregg Zaun (to the surprise of some). Many have argued that this report's value is minimal. However, I disagree. For one thing, it gave some solid backing to the widespread nature of steroids in the game, as the Globe 's Jeff Blair commented on The Score . "This issue clearly goes beyond hitters," Blair said. "The fact that they came out with the names of three prominent pitchers—Clemens, Pettitte, and Gagne—sort of give...