One more reason

It goes without saying, but baseball is the best sport ever invented. I don't have time to enumerate all the reasons why - the combination of individual skills with team play, it's democratic, there is no clock, it's equal parts mental AND physical, etc. ad infinitum - to name a few.

One other reason was in the Post this morning, namely a quote from DC United's Charlie Davis about a new celebration dance he is planning for the next time he scores.  A sport with celebration dances?  

Two more reasons why baseball is THE best sport ever are: there are no celebration dances; and if a player every DID one, the next time he came to bat he would be drilled in the head by the opposing pitcher - the way it should be. 

Celebration dances for doing what your supposed to do?  Pathetic in any sport, and thankfully not a part of the greatest sport.

Sugar

Over the weekend we rented a great movie called 'Sugar." It's kind of a baseball 'Hoop Dreams' but instead of inner city kids in the U.S. it focuses on a talented 20-year old Dominican pitching prospect.

The film has some great baseball playing and situations but 'Sugar' is not necessarily a baseball movie. It's also about immigration, the world becoming a smaller place, and chasing but not always finding your dream. In that regards, this is a completely atypical sports film (but I'm already giving away too much).

One interesting paradox for me was as Sugar, the nickname for the pitching prospect, navigates the cutthroat world of professional baseball he is surrounded by nice and friendly folks who help him out off the field - the surrogate father in the Dominican who taught him the game after his father died, the Arizona waitress who teaches him how to order eggs, the Iowa farm family who serve as his host, the bonus-baby draft pick from Stanford, and the Hispanic-American support system that buoys him later in the film.

Not just a great baseball movie, but a great movie. Check it out.

And let me know if you find the soundtrack anywhere, which features some TV on the Radio and a Spanish version of Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah."

SCOTUS

from the Boston Globe--Why Sonia Sotomayor is my choice for the Supreme Court: She issued the preliminary injunction against Major League Baseball on March 30, 1995, preventing the owners from unilaterally implementing a new collective bargaining agreement and using replacement players. It effectively ended the 1994 baseball strike.